Investor’s Business Daily:

A powerful House Republican committee chairman accused the National Labor Relations Board of being a “rogue agency” in a letter to its general counsel Monday. The chairman claimed the NLRB knowingly withheld damaging documents relating to his committee’s probe of the agency’s controversial Boeing (BA) complaint.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darryl Issa, R-Calif., in a letter to Lafe Solomon, NLRB acting general counsel, said the withheld documents “demonstrate that the NLRB is acting as a rogue agency that believes it does not have to fully answer to Congress.”

Issa was referring to a cache of emails obtained earlier this month by the watchdog group Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act.

He expressed anger that the emails were not turned over to his committee first and said the messages demonstrated the agency’s lack of impartiality. He further alleged that some of them contradicted claims NLRB staffers made as part of his committee’s probe.

NLRB spokeswoman Nancy Cleland said the agency had not withheld the emails. She said that the committee’s requests and the FOIA requests that produced the emails were handled separately by different people and that caused confusion.

“Because the documents were being produced on separate tracks, the Committee had not yet received some materials at the time they were provided to Judicial Watch. It is the Agency’s intent to provide those materials as part of its next, and fourth, delivery of documents later this week,” Cleland said in a statement to IBD, adding that in the future the committee requests will be given priority over FOIA requests.

The 505 pages of emails do not contain especially startling revelations. For the most part, the NLRB staffers appear to be very circumspect in their messages to each other. There are several redacted sections, most citing FOIA exceptions for privacy and attorney work product.

Nevertheless in several cases NLRB staffers do offer some personal commentary on the Boeing case and the effect is not unlike listening in at the watercooler. Those messages show the staff to be enthused at the prospect of bringing the aerospace giant to heel and disdainful of their critics on the case.

[…]

The NLRB is an independent federal agency intended to oversee business/labor relations under the National Labor Relations Act. Its members are appointed by the White House and Congress. Business groups have accused the NLRB under President Obama of tilting heavily towards labor.

At the time of the Boeing case, its chairwoman was Wilma Liebman, a former Teamsters lawyer. Obama had also appointed former Service Employees International Union lawyer Craig Becker to the five-member board. Only one board member was a Republican.

“The unprecedented NLRB decision to attack Boeing seemed abusive on its face and cried out for further investigation. And we suspected it was done at the behest of union interests and not the public interest. The pro-union email traffic we uncovered confirm this,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, in an email to IBD.

[…]

Issa claimed that the NLRB withheld the emails from his committee even after Judicial Watch made them public. “This is very troubling and creates the appearance that you discovered these emails, realized they were damaging to the NLRB, and intentionally withheld them from the committee,” he said in his letter to Solomon.

He further alleged that the emails showed that NLRB members “made misrepresentations to the committee,” citing earlier claims by staffers that there were no communications between Solomon’s office and the rest of the NLRB relating to the Boeing matter. Issa notes that on May 5 both Solomon and then-NLRB chairwoman Wilma Liebman were included in the email chain that passed around the TNR article. An April 20 release showed Solomon forwarding an email with the IAM press release to Liebman.

“This raises questions about the content of other documents you have failed to produce to the committee and is especially alarming considering it can be a federal crime to obstruct a congressional investigation,” Issa wrote. He also alleged the emails showed that NLRB staffers have tried to “slow walk” providing documents to his committee.

He throws in one last jab for good measure. “Your continued personal obstruction, lack of compliance with a validly issued congressional subpoena, and false statements to the committee are unacceptable. I hope that you will cease these obstructive efforts and immediately comply with the committee’s subpoena,” he said.

Only thing better would be had he ended it with an “I said GOOD DAY, SIR!”

(h/t Dan C, via Twitter)