Oversight Committee Dems Invoke House Rules, Call on Issa to Hold Special Meeting to Vote on Protocols for Handling Sensitive Healthcare.gov Documents

Washington, DC—Today, Reps. Elijah E. Cummings, Gerry Connolly, and John Tierney, top Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to Committee Chairman Darrell Issa seeking a special Committee meeting pursuant to House Rules to establish procedures for handling sensitive documents produced to the Committee in response to subpoenas.

They sent their request after Issa disregarded two previous letters from Cummings—one on November 6 and one earlier today—highlighting warnings from the MITRE Company about the sensitivity of security documents subpoenaed this week by Issa relating to the Healthcare.gov website. These documents include software code and other technical information that MITRE officials believe could give hackers a roadmap to compromise the security of the website and the personal information of American citizens. MITRE had already produced redacted copies of the documents to the Committee, and last Friday Issa's staffers were given full access to review the complete unredacted documents, raising questions about why Issa is continuing to demand physical copies of the unredacted reports.

Under House Rules, Issa is not allowed to share copies of the subpoenaed documents with anyone who is not a Member or staff of the Committee until he holds the special meeting to adopt a protocol to properly safeguard the documents or otherwise seeks approval of the full Committee.

The full letter is posted here.