~~Pres. Obama to Sarah Brady
Posted on 06/13/2012 4:52:42 AM PDT by marktwain
The House Government Reform and Oversight committee is expected to vote, next week, on whether to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. It is the fourth time Congress has scheduled such a vote against an executive branch member in the past 30 years. In this case, it is completely justified.
The pending contempt vote stems from Holder's failure to turn over thousands of documents related to the Justice Department's handling of Operation Fast and Furious. Under the program, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed the sale of guns to Mexico, where they ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. The program came to light after guns linked to the program were found at the murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was gunned down in December 2010.
After Terry's murder, on February 4, 2011, Holder's Justice Department sent a letter to Congress denying government whistleblower allegations that the Fast and Furious program allowed guns to "walk" to Mexico. Ten months later, however, on December 2, 2011, Holder's DOJ reversed position, acknowledged the program's existence, and admitted it was fundamentally flawed.
The American people deserve to know why the Justice Department changed its mind about Fast and Furious and retaliated against the initial whistleblowers, even calling them liars. It's also imperative for the public to learn who knew what about the program and when.
The Justice Department has turned over 7,600 pages of documents so far, but this is only a small fraction of the over 100,000 pages that are relevant to Fast and Furious, according to House investigators. Worse, many of the 7,600 pages Holder did turn over to Congress were either already public or so heavily redacted that they're effectively useless.
Holder has demonstrably failed to comply with the congressional subpoena that the House Oversight Committee served him with last October. He has not asserted Executive Privilege or otherwise explained why the relevant materials should not be surrendered to the House.
In May 2011, Holder testified under oath that he had only heard of Operation Fast and Furious "a few weeks ago." After subsequently obtained documents revealed that he had been made aware of the program as early as July 2010, Holder tried to downplay the discrepancy. Last November, he told the Senate Judiciary committee that when he testified "a few weeks, I probably could have said a couple of months." He called efforts to highlight this contradicting timeline "a distraction," but the episode seriously compromised Holder's credibility on the issue.
Despite all of these past failings, deceptions and diversions, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, is still willing to compromise with Holder on the issue: "While the Justice Department can still stop the process of contempt, this will only occur through the delivery of the post-February 4, 2011, documents related to Operation Fast and Furious and whistleblower accusations subpoenaed by the committee. If the attorney general decides to produce these subpoenaed documents, I am confident we can reach agreement on other materials and render the process of contempt unnecessary," Issa announced.
The time is long-overdue for Holder to take Issa's offer and put an end to his stonewalling. And if the attorney general refuses, Issa would be right to follow through on the contempt citation.
Lead story on Nightly (not) News...
His history is linked to so much dirty business that it can't be expunged.
Eric Holder cannot turn over the documents because it would violate his 5th Amendment right to self-incrimination, and would place the President right in the line of fire.
We all know that.
Impeach them both.They set this thing up and got people killed all to “work under the radar”.
~~Pres. Obama to Sarah Brady
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CBS News Falsely Claims to Be First in Reporting Fast & Furious Scandal
Senator Tells Holder to Resign Right to His Face (video)
Issa, Boehner decline ‘Fast and Furious’ meeting with Holder until DOJ satisfies document
Senate GOP leaders don't back Cornyn call for Holder to resign (GUTLESS RINO ALERT)
Sheriff Joe Strikes Back: Asks Court to Dismiss Eric Holder DOJ’s Lawsuit
Foreign alien property tax (FAPT)
Public [taxpayer funded] Study: Illegal Immigrants Commit Less Crime Than Americans
Holder: Everyone knows ‘in-person voting fraud is uncommon’
DOJ workers monitor SC primary
Meet the Radical DOJ Lawyer Suing Florida to Keep Foreigners on Voter Rolls
The timing couldn’t be better for the onionskin of Holder’s treachery to be slowly peeled back... all the way to November.
On the thread titled, “Senate GOP leaders don’t back Cornyn call for Holder to resign (GUTLESS RINO ALERT),” I wrote the following:
Not that it’s the intent of these tired old gelding RINOs, but this tact may pay off. The longer Holder twists in the political wind.. and he will... the more pain that can be applied to 0bama. American voters have the attention span of gnats, so leaving Holder in place for now will have a greater benefit in the long run than off-loading him now and letting him be a faded memory by November.
Holder is one of the most unpopular members of this regime. As such, that unpopularity should be leveraged to our benefit. If he goes, whoever takes his place won’t be any better anyway, so I say leave him in place and throw salt on the festering wound that he is.
He’s more valuable as Exhibit A of the planeload of evidence as to why the Obama cabal is so poisonous for this country.
Holder’s resignation would be counterproductive to any investigation into F&F, or any of the other investigations into DOJ/admin illegalities. Once he’s gone, the political will to continue would likely be lost.
And, as you say, beyond Obama, he’s prominent among the slimy faces of this regime, and having him on the hot seat throughout the summer, especially with the new heat coming from parts of the media, would be good for November.
I’m still confused—what was f&f supposed to have accomplished? Was it to demonstrate that guns are bad and have a ground for gun control?
Somebody help a naive girl out—can you explain it to me or send me a link that could help me understand?
The administration pushed the idea that it was guns from American gunshops that were causing the accelerated violence in the drug cartel wars in Mexico. This might have worked 15 years ago, but the new media quickly found that assertion to be the fraud that it was and exposed it.
In order to push that idea, and especially the idea that legislation or regulation was necessary to prevent the flow of semi-automatic “assault weapons” to Mexico, the ATF forced and encouraged American gun dealers to sell guns to straw purchasers, with no intention of tracking or recovering them, except at crime scenes in Mexico. Mexican authorities were not informed, and there was no plan or known means to make cases against the drug cartels from the fact that guns connected to American gun dealers were found at Mexican crime scenes. At the minimum, over 2,000 guns were involved. The number may have been much more, we do not know. The program was only stopped after an American Border Patrol agent was killed with one of the “walked” guns. Many of the guns were paid for with money from the FBI.
The ATF pushed for a regulation to require that if any two or more semiautomatic rifles were sold within a week, that had to be reported to the ATF by dealers in the Southwest. This flies in the face of existing law, and opens the door to the creation of a defacto national registration of these guns, because an existing program involving pistols, does exactly that.
Despite intense opposition to the rule, the ATF put it into effect, even though they are likely, through Fast and Furious/Gunwaker/Murdergate, to be the primary source of the firearms in question.
Here is a link to another summation of the scandal and how it has been developing:
There is also the fact that at least TWO Americans, Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata, both of whom worked for OUR government, were murdered in cold blood by walked weapons and MIGHT have been set up.
OR it was an operation to create the illusion that a liberal lie about gun sellers was the truth. Guns were sold (NO tracking devices) to Mexican drug cartels in hopes that those guns could be used as an excuse for more gun control. Kind of like when democrats send fake letters to journalists pretending to be conservatives who are haters. Or like Hitler's SS sending raunchy letters to Germans - pretending they're written by Jews. It's an old game, but MSM falls for it because they want to...
The following articles also put a fine point on what has happened.
The Department of Justice ’ s Operation Fast and Furious: Accounts of ATF Agents(above) Four ATF field agents testify under oath that they "never even heard of intentionally letting guns "walk" before F&F."
‘Wide Receiver’ CI: ‘It had nothing to do with Bush or even DOJ’
New Documents Highlight Differences in Bush-Era, Obama-Era Gunrunner Investigations
19 spineless, senseless Republicans joined the majority to install Holder as head of the Obama Justice Department:
Alexander (R-TN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Chambliss (R-Ga)
Collins (R-ME)
Corker (R-TN)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hatch (R-UT)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lugar (R-IN)
McCain (R-AZ)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Sessions (R-AL)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Interestingly, eight of those 19 GOP Senators will not be running for re-election in 2012 -- having retired or been defeated in the primary.
And a ninth, Murkowski, was rejected by the party's voters in a 2010 primary -- but re-elected in the general as an Independent.
Interestingly, eight of those 19 GOP Senators will not be running for re-election in 2012 -- having retired or been defeated in the primary.
And a ninth, Murkowski, was rejected by the party's voters in a 2010 primary -- but re-elected in the general as an Independent.
It's not nice to play games with your base...
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