Today, The Washington Examiner asks the question: “What is Elizabeth Warren hiding from Congress?” Apparently, the Obama administration advisor who has been tasked with helping to establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) deserves an “award for the most evasive witness testifying before Congress” after a performance during a May oversight hearing in which she “responded with a systematic evasion that cries out for a contempt of Congress citation.” The Examiner claims that she has “refused to be honest with the subcommittee” and invokes the “maxim from the Watergate days that the cover-up is always worse than the crime.”

This all sounds pretty bad, right up until the Examiner tries to provide an example to back up their rhetoric (emphasis added):

A review of the transcript of that May 24 subcommittee hearing reveals multiple examples of Warren's evasiveness on matters over which Congress, and especially the House of Representatives, has unquestioned authority. For example, Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle, R-N.Y., asked Warren why the CFPB website lists salary ranges for 10 new employees as $72,000 to $149,000. The duties for the 10 jobs are comparable to those of a GS-9 in the federal Civil Service, which has a salary range of $41,000 to $54,000. The honest answer would have been that the CFPB must compete with salaries paid in the financial sector, which are considerably higher on average than those in the civil service. Instead, Warren attempted to use the question for a lengthy dissertation on the public administration and management theory behind the new agency's enacting legislation. Buerkle interrupted after listening to several minutes of Warren's filibuster and demanded a direct answer. Warren resumed the filibuster, but finally got the point about salary disparities between the government and private sector.

So the Examiner's problem with Warren is that she gave the “honest answer” (so much for the prior claim that she “refused to be honest with the subcommittee”), but did not do so quite as quickly as the paper would have liked. And that's the best example they could come up with. For that, they invoke Watergate and a contempt of Congress citation.

The Examiner has already debunked the purpose of their editorial; the story dissolves even more with a closer look at the Buerkle questioning

Here's video of Buerkle's questioning of Warren:

You may notice that in spite of the Examiner's claims of a Warren “filibuster,” Buerkle is doing the majority of the talking. By my count, the Republican representative spoke for three minutes and 28 seconds, while the Obama advisor spoke for only one minute 46 seconds. Indeed, Buerkle's opening question, at two minutes 13 seconds, took up more time than all of Warren's responses combined.

Buerkle began with a discussion of her broad disagreements with the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill and her concerns with the CFPB before getting to her specific question about the salaries of CFPB regulators. So it followed that before getting to Buerkle's specific question, Warren responded to her broader comments, explaining why the CFPB is necessary to “pick up consumer laws and consumer responsibilities that have been scattered among seven different agencies, none of those agencies focusing on consumer practices and consumer products.” Warren didn't speak for “several minutes” as the Examiner claimed; she spoke for about one minute five seconds before Buerkle interrupted her.

After Buerkle responds by taking 42 seconds to complain that Warren was not “answering my question,” Warren spends about the same amount of time giving the explanation that the Examiner acknowledges is correct. Buerkle then uses the remainder of her time disagreeing with Warren's answer.

Again, this is the best example the Examiner has for suggesting Warren should be charged with a federal crime and invoking the biggest political crime in our nation's history.