Posted on 12/16/2011 10:19:30 AM PST by neverdem
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum now thinks Attorney General Eric Holder should resign or be fired, after calling for it during the last presidential debate before the Iowa caucuses late on Thursday night.
“I agree with Gov. Perry [in that Holder needs to leave office],” Santorum said in response to a question about Operation Fast and Furious from Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. “If he was the attorney general under me, I’d fire him, not have him resign. Fire him.”
“This is something [Holder] should have been aware of and something that should have been stopped and should haven’t started in the first place,” Santorum said of Fast and Furious.
Santorum’s call for Holder to be fired is significant because when The Daily Caller first asked him in early October at a debate at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, he responded that he’s never called for a resignation before. “I’ve never called for the resignation of anybody,” Santorum said then.
Santorum also said Fast and Furious is another sign that Americans should pay more attention to foreign policy in the Americas.
“This president has ignored that threat, has insulted our allies like Honduras and Colombia deliberately and embraced like other scoundrels in the Middle East, embraced Chavez, Ortega and others in South America not promoting our value and interests,” Santorum added.
Fast and Furious was a program of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, overseen by Holder’s Justice Department. It facilitated the sale of thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels via straw purchasers, people who legally purchased guns in the United States with the known intention of illegally trafficking them somewhere else.
At least 300 people in Mexico were killed with Fast and Furious weapons, as was U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. The identities of the Mexican victims are unknown.
The scandal had not come up during any presidential debate until Thursday night’s Iowa Debate on Fox News. Even so, six of the seven remaining Republican candidates, Santorum being the latest, have demanded Attorney General Eric Holder’s resignation or firing over the scandal.
Before asking Santorum about Fast and Furious, Kelly first asked Texas Gov. Rick Perry if he and the Republican congressmen — now 60 of them, with Ron Paul’s call for it — demanding Holder’s resignation are politicizing the issue. Perry responded that he and Republican congressmen are not politicizing the issue and that it’s a legitimate call for Holder’s resignation. “If I’m the president of the United States, and I find out that there is an operation like Fast and Furious and my attorney general didn’t know about it, I would have him resign immediately,” Perry said. “The president proclaims that the border of Texas and Mexico, the U.S. border with Mexico is safer than it’s ever been.”
Perry said President Barack Obama’s claim that the U.S. border with Mexico is safer than it’s ever been isn’t true.
“Well, let me tell you, I’ve been dealing with this issue for 11 years,” Perry said. “I sent Texas Ranger recon teams there. The law enforcement men and women face fire from across the border, on the U.S. side from the drug cartels. It is not safe there. Our country is in jeopardy. If we are going to be able to defend America from Iran, from Hezbollah, from Hamas, that are using Mexico as a border, as a way to penetrate in the southern part of the United States, Venezuela has the largest Iranian embassy in the world there.”
Perry argued that to ensure future programs like Operation Fast and Furious don’t occur, the United States needs a “Monroe doctrine again like we did against the Cubans in the ’60s.”
The Monroe Doctrine asserts that the United States has the right to intervene in other countries of the Western Hemisphere.
The Fox News debate questions caused the term “Fast and Furious” to trend on Twitter nationwide and worldwide for some time Thursday evening.
Santorum’s call for Holder to be fired makes former House Speaker Newt Gingrich the last presidential candidate left who has not called for the attorney general’s resignation or firing over Fast and Furious. “I believe, for a lot of different reasons, Eric Holder ought to be fired,” Gingrich told CNS News back in October. “I think he’s a very bad attorney general.”
But, Gingrich admitted, “I honestly don’t know” when the CNS News reporter asked him if he thinks Holder “misled” Congress during his Fast and Furious testimony. “I haven’t looked at it [Fast and Furious] enough,” Gingrich said.
For the past couple of months, Gingrich’s campaign hasn’t responded to TheDC’s requests for further comment on the issue, or answered whether he thinks Holder is ultimately responsible for Fast and Furious. The campaign also hasn’t answered if Gingrich thinks Fast and Furious is one of the many reasons why Holder should resign.
Gingrich’s campaign didn’t respond to another request for comment on Thursday night after the debate.
Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar’s office announced on Thursday morning that it has 75 cosponsors on its House of Representatives resolution of “no confidence” in Attorney General Eric Holder’s ability to serve.
Between the 59 congressmen demanding that Holder resign and those who have signed onto Gosar’s resolution, there are now a total of 85 members of Congress who don’t trust Holder in his office.
Some of those members who have signed the “no confidence” resolution have not made outright calls for Holder’s resignation, but the resolution is close to an outright call. Likewise, some of the 57 demanding Holder resign have not signed onto Gosar’s resolution, either...
The resolution alleges that Holder’s actions have proven the nation’s “top law enforcement official” is not “competent, trustworthy and beyond reproach,” and that he has sought to “cover up” mistakes when they are made rather than cooperating with Congress “in disclosing the events and circumstances and transparently addressing the issues.”
The measure describes how Holder “presided over a law enforcement scheme called ‘Operation Fast and Furious’ that was ill conceived at the outset and mismanaged.”
It describes Fast and Furious as an operation that “allowed thousands of weapons of various types to be illegally sold and or transferred from the United States to violent drug cartels and known criminals in Mexico and elsewhere,” and that the operation “was not set up to catch criminals and no proper monitoring of the guns being sold or transferred was undertaken.”
The resolution also points out that Holder “further failed to inform or cooperate with Mexican authorities even though hundreds of weapons were being sent to Mexico,” and that “Mexico is under severe stress due to drug cartel wars.”
It adds that because of Holder’s “failure to properly control, monitor, or establish Operation Fast and Furious, it is likely Mexican nationals were killed or wounded by weapons sold through this scheme,” and that “the carnage resulting from Operation Fast and Furious is not limited to Mexico.”
The measure points out that “evidence further suggests that such guns have been used in the United States, and may be involved in the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.”
The resolution explains that the Obama administration and the Department of Justice, “through Attorney General Holder’s office, initially provided false information to Congress,” “retaliated” against whistle-blowers who provided Congress with information, “has redacted key information and has been intransigent, obstructionist and obdurate.”
The “no confidence” resolution is a largely symbolic measure but is nonetheless a more official move than statements from members calling for Holder’s resignation. It includes a breakdown of everything those in favor of the “no confidence” resolution allege Holder to have done to earn it. A floor vote isn’t likely to happen any time soon, unless Speaker of the House John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor — or another member of leadership — gets on board soon.
According to Gosar’s office, the members who haven’t outright called for Holder’s resignation, but have signed onto his “no confidence” resolution, are Reps. Billy Long of Missouri, Pete Sessions of Texas, Renee Ellmers of North Carolina, Tom Cole of Oklahoma, Ralph Hall of Texas, Doug Lamborn of Colorado, Bobby Schilling of Illinois, Austin Scott of Georgia, Bill Johnson of Ohio, Bill Posey of Florida, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Phil Roe of Tennessee, Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, Marlin Stutzman of Indiana, Phil Gingrey of Georgia, Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Bob Turner of New York, Mark Amodei of Nevada, Rick Crawford of Arkansas, Dan Benishek of Michigan, Joe Barton of Texas, Todd Rokita of Indiana, Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, Steve King of Iowa and David Schweikert of Arizona.
With multiple other bylines plus essays by the likes of Ann Coulter and Nat Hentoff, why does The Daily Caller get regularly relegated to the blog category?
P.S. Bob Turner of New York was outspent almost 3:1 by the rats to replace Anthony Weiner.
If Santorum were President he would fire Holder.
That assumes that Holder did not start fast & Furious at the President’s request.
Obama is in this mess up to his ears.
Any republican president would fire Holder and some democrats if they were in there. He is one of the worst, most corrupt AGs in our history.
Call your reps and tell them to vote in favor of HR 490.
Impeach and prosecute the racist Socialist bastard!
After signing the petition you will get an automatic way to send an e-mail to your Congressman and Senators. You can use their text or fill in your own.
I strongly encourage all FReepers to sign that petition and to send their own thoughts about this to their Congress critters. Let them know that you are aware of this issue and that you are not going to forget about it. Let them know you will be watching to see what they do about it.
You do not understand> How can you fire a man for doing what you told him to do?
Nuhrenburg comes to mond.
and to mInd also
You do not understand> How can you fire a man for doing what you told him to do?
Thanks for the link! This thread will be linked later.
Thanks neverdem.
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