Obama's MurderGate: Fast and Furious Investigation to Continue Regardless of Contempt Vote

Townhall.com ^ | June 20, 2012 | Katie Pavlich

[Kaslin]

UPDATE 4:14 PM: Attorney General Eric Holder has been voted in contempt of Congress by the House Oversight Committee by 23-17. The vote came down after three Demcratic amendments to the contempt charge were voted down. An amendment introduced by Rep. Trey Gowdy rendering President Obama's invocation of executive privilege not applicable or relevant to this case at this time. The contempt charge will now move to the full House next week.

Capitol Hill- Attorney General Eric Holder got a temporary lifeline from President Obama today just minutes before the House Oversight Committee started debate over whether to hold Holder in contempt with a vote. Obama granted an executive privilege request sent to him by Holder in letter form yesterday. The time at which the letter was sent is unclear, but Issa was unaware of the request until today when he was informed by Deputy Attorney General James Cole the request had been granted. The assertion of executive privilege came after Holder failed to produce 1300 Fast and Furious documents and asked Chairman Issa to drop the Congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious at a meeting yesterday.

“Brian Terry has been dead over 500 days now and nobody has been held accountable,” Rep. Buerkle said. “The lack of transparency with the death of a Border Patrol Agent is sickening.”

Executive privilege is used to keep communications directly involving the President confidential. The fact that the president invoked it for Holder today at the very last minute raises more questions about who in the White House knew what and when about Operation Fast and Furious. 

“For the first 11 months, the administration denied participation in this,” Rep. Mica said. “This is a sad day when Barack Obama would exert himself at the last minute.”

President Obama has claimed he knew nothing about the program before the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010. He first spoke about the topic during an interview with Univision in March 2011, yet Holder said didn't "know" about the program until May 2011.

"The assertion of executive privilege raises monumental questions.  How can the President assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement?  How can the President exert executive privilege over documents he's supposedly never seen?  Is something very big being hidden to go to this extreme?  The contempt citation is an important procedural mechanism in our system of checks and balances.  The questions from Congress go to determining what happened in a disastrous government program for accountability and so that it's never repeated again," said a statement from Senator Charles Grassley, who has been investigating the scandal.

Speaker John Boehner accused the White House of engaging in a cover-up of the Fast and Furious program.

"The White House decision to invoke executive privilege implies that White House officials were either involved in the ‘Fast and Furious’ operation or the cover-up that followed. The Administration has always insisted that wasn't the case. Were they lying, or are they now bending the law to hide the truth?" Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said in a statement.

The White House defended the move. Despite President Obama’s previous claims he knew nothing about Fast and Furious, at least three of his senior White House national security advisors received emails about the program, including Obama’s Senior Advisor to Latin America Dan Restrepo.

“Now, was fighting the drug gangs at the border a sensitive national security matter? And, if so was the President of the United States of America personally involved in making decisions as to how to conduct that fight? If that’s the case, this has reached a different level and we now know why the attorney general has ferociously defended these documents,” Judge Andrew Napolitano said on Fox News.

It's worth remembering that back in 2007, Obama attacked the Bush administration for the use of executive privilege, saying, “There has been a tendency on the part of this administration to try to hide behind executive privilege every time there is something a little shaky that is taking place. I think the administration would be best served by coming clean on this.”

Rep. Trey Gowdy, a former prosecutor, referenced this position in the committee today, saying, “I’m going to resist the temptation to contrast Senator Obama’s position on executive privilege with President Obama’s.”

"The Attorney General is not above the law," Rep. Scott DesJarlais said, while Rep. Gosar added, “Finding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt is long overdue.”

Rep. Maloney and other Democrats, used the hearing to push for more gun control, falsely blamed former President Bush for the program and defended Holder in his response to the Congressional Fast and Furious investigation.

“I am offended, personally, that you would call the Attorney General a liar,” Maloney said to Chairman Issa. Holder has changed his testimony about Fast and Furious under oath in front of Congress multiple times.  

Gowdy presented multiple pieces of evidence to justify contempt and to prove the Justice Department has been less than honest in its response to Congressional inquiries.

“This was not Mr. Chairman as initially the administration mantra an Arizona investigation. Senior level officials within the Department of Justice in Washington knew about Fast and Furious well before Special Agent Brian Terry was murdered. Senior level DOJ officials were briefed, they discussed press conference opportunities, they discussed the unsealing of indictments, they traded emails about the status of the case, they approved wiretap applications and most significantly Mr. Chairman they actively discussed the tactic of gunwalking well in advice of Special Agent Brian Terry’s murder,” Gowdy said.

Issa said that a contempt vote will not be the end to his investigation into the Department of Justice on this issue.

[RavenATB]

After declaring executive privilege Obama, himself, has now established Fast and Furious as the bloodiest White House/Presidential scandal in the history of America.

[samtheman]

IF Obama wins a 2nd term
AND there’s an opening on the Supreme Court
THEN Holder will be appointed to the Supreme Court

[xzins]

To what extent was gunwalking used prior to Holder and Obama using it?

Anyone know?

[Joe Boucher]

This is obviously all about race.
The mean and nasty GOP is trying to lynch the negro.
Least that is the dems story line.

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

The race card is going to be pulled out now faster than a Vegas dealer

[FlyVet]

I wonder if the Mexican people are noticing that their precious, caring American Democrats are continuing to stonewall and whitewash this mess.

[Safetgiver]

“Gunwalking” was not an approved, accepted means of investigation. Gunwalking means seeing a straw buyer procuring a weapon(s),handing it off to a third party and saying, in effect, “There goes another one to Speedy Gonzales.” An accepted means of conducting this type of investigation includes apprehending both the third party and the straw buyer. Bush’s ATF used GPS in the stock to track the weapons into Mexico where ATF and the Mexican Government found the end user and arrested the end user, third party and straw buyer, and in some cases, the original seller.

[Erik Latranyi]

To what extent was gunwalking used prior to Holder and Obama using it?

In the past, law enforcement (ATF) has allowed straw buyers to complete the transaction so they can be closely surveilled while passing the firearm to the criminal.

But if there was any chance of losing the firearm, they would intercept immediately. Hence, none were lost.

Under Project Wide Receiver (Bush43) the ATF worked with the Mexican government. A straw purchase would be allowed and the buyer would be surveilled crossing the border where Mexican authorities were waiting to intercept.

On one occasion, the Mexicans failed to stop a truck with 300 firearms on board. The program was shut down immediately.

Under Fast & Furious, the ATF made no attempt to follow the straw buyer. There was no coordination with Mexican authorities. In fact, Mexican authorities were never told that firearms were pouring across the border through this program.

Some of the straw buyers were "informants" for the FBI or DEA. Those straw buyers were using taxpayer funds to purchase the weapons that were passed on to drug cartels. So, even if stopped, those straw buyers could never be prosecuted.

[Erik Latranyi]

Keep this in mind:

We only know of a handful of murders committed with these firearms because they were left at the scene.

There are probably hundreds of more American murders where the criminal retained the weapon and no link was made back to Fast & Furious.

[OldEarlGray]

Dn't need n Weatherman t see which way the bama wind

blws.

 

"Behind the Violence, Says Jane Alpert, Was Sex"

--November 09, 1981--
"The leaders of the Weather Underground, she believes, followed a similar pattern of constantly shifting sexual alliances..."

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20080637,00.html

"He [Bill Ayers] also writes about the Weathermen's sexual experimentation as they tried to 'smash monogamy.' The Weathermen were 'an army of lovers,' he says, and describes having had different sexual partners, including his best male friend."

Source: New York Times, September 11, 2001: "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

"...the Weathermen, when not engaged in group sex, committed such revolutionary acts as parading with a Viet Cong flag through a local park on Independence Day and spray-painting the walls of a high school with the slogans, "Off the Pigs," "Viet Cong Will Win," and "F#$k U.S. Imperialism."..."

Campus Wars: The Peace Movement At American State Universities in the Vietnam Era

 

"What happens next bears watching closely, as does the response of the president, ex-Speaker Pelosi, and others on the left.  Encouraged by leftists in the Democratic Party and funded by left-leaning nonprofit organizations and celebrity contributors, Occupy Wall Street may in time morph into something resembling the radical factions of the late 1960s and 1970s."

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/predicting_the_weatherman.html

The Osawatomie Coincidence

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2818309/posts

[MestaMachine]

Lest you miss one.

[newfreep]

[Travis McGee]

"We're still working on gun control, but under the radar."

~~Pres. Obama to Sarah Brady

[RavenATB]

The “previous administration” ran the program the Democrats refer to as “the same” in an entirely different way. No guns were ever lost, because federal agents never allowed the guns that were used in the effort to get outside their control.

[treetopsandroofs]

The Weather Channel told us this morning that it’s all a Republican fishing expedition, so this isn’t really important.

/s

[TexasCajun]

Holder has already lied to Congress not once but twice and had to come back and revise his statement and amend the records.

I imagine there is a horde of lies being covered up by not producing more documents.

[Kaslin]

On one occasion, the Mexicans failed to stop a truck with 300 firearms on board. The program was shut down immediately.

Hannity had Michelle Malkin and that liberal loon Tamara Holder. Listen to what that lunatic claims.

Eric Holder obstructing Justice? She starts at the 0:3:58 minute time line

[TexasCajun]

Holder has already lied to Congress not once but twice and had to come back and revise his statement and amend the records.

I imagine there is a horde of lies being covered up by not producing more documents.

[TexasCajun]

Holder has already lied to Congress not once but twice and had to come back and revise his statement and amend the records.

I imagine there is a horde of lies being covered up by not producing more documents.