Yesterday, the President invoked “executive privilege” in order to cover up his administration’s involvement in a plan to slander America’s law-abiding gun owners, which went awry and ended in the death of a Federal agent.
IBD’s editorial board has had enough
President Obama’s contempt for the rule of law hit a new low when, on the eve of a vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, he granted his AG’s 11th-hour request to hide sought-after documents on Operation Fast and Furious under the cover of executive privilege.
“I write now to inform you that the president has asserted executive privilege over the relevant post-Feb. 4, 2011, documents,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole says in a letter that GOP Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa received just before Wednesday’s hearing and vote, a letter that apparently was not mentioned in a last-minute meeting between Issa and Holder Tuesday night.
Or maybe it wasn’t the 11th hour at all, but just a long-planned final gambit in the cover-up of who made the decisions in a federally sponsored effort to provide Mexican drug cartels with sophisticated American firearms and who is ultimately responsible for the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry with these weapons?
Remember – Fast and Furious didn’t attack terrorism. It didn’t even attack the narcotraficantes that have made Northern Mexico more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan, even Chicago.
It was a government financed effort to smear America’s firearms industry and law-abiding gun owners, in pursuit of Obama’s goal to try to reverse the slide in this nation’s gun control laws.
No more.
Executive privilege, as Issa noted in his opening remarks, can only be asserted when it involves direct presidential decision-making and communications. It cannot be invoked, legally, to prevent others in the chain of command from explaining their actions or responding to requests for information on their decisions in which the president is not involved.
And the Administration has been lying to Congress, and the people (over half of whom the program attempted to slander) the entire time:
Back in February 2011, Assistant Attorney General Ron Welch, in response to the investigations by Rep. Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley of the Fast and Furious gun-“walking” program run out of ATF’s Phoenix office, wrote a letter stating that the “allegation that ATF ‘sanctioned’ or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons … is false.”
Later, Deputy Attorney General Cole, in another letter to Congress, wrote: “Facts have come to light during the course of this investigation that indicate the Feb. 4 letter contains inaccuracies.” In other words, the Department of Justice lied to Congress. The cover-up continues with the invocation of executive privilege.
IBD’s editorial writers have reached their conclusion:
Fast and Furious has become worse than Watergate. No one died at Watergate. Just what is in those documents that Obama and Holder so desperately want to hide? Brian Terry’s family and the American people deserve answers.
Well, this was supposed to be the most transparent administration in history.
Rhetorical question: can you imagine what would have happened had George W. Bush spent federal money to smear, say, ACORN or Common Cause or the Violence Policy Center?
Well, this was supposed to be the most transparent administration in history.
Oh, they’re transparent, all right. We’ve all seen right through them from the outset.
This is even more cynical. While everyone is paying attention to this, Obama diverts from the miserable economy and the disaster that is his foreign policy.
Up until yesterday, I thought this whole flap was Holder’s miscalculation. By invoking presidential privilege, has Obama injected his own decision-making into the F&F debacle?
I thought Hinderaker’s take on the likeliness of this to succeed in courts was particularly interesting. Quoting from the Espy decision that forms the basis of the discussions he points out the following:
“The deliberative process privilege is a qualified privilege and can be overcome by a sufficient showing of need. … For example, where there is reason to believe the documents sought may shed light on government misconduct, ‘the privilege is routinely denied,’ on the grounds that shielding internal government deliberations in this context does not serve ‘the public’s interest in honest, effective government.’”
Anyone think that there wasn’t government misconduct in this case, either with Fast & Furious being approved, or with Holder’s denial of knowledge?
From the very beginning this looks like a gun control scheme. Remember the meme that 97%(or something close) of the guns traced in Mexico were from the U.S.A?
Remember, the Star Tribune running the story on the dual citizen running guns from MN to Mexico? It ran for several weeks and was about three pages long each week. I would not be surprised if the subject of the story was recruited through this or a similar program.
I think that this operation was meant to demonize gun shops and rally support for more gun control. The only way to get more support for gun control is through more carnage. The way to get more carnage? Give the bad guys guns, then blame it on the gun shops.
Anything ATF touches turns to mered. What kind of knob would trust them given their history…..oh, *snap*
The Star trib story. http://www.startribune.com/investigators/96265414.html?page=all&prepage=3&c=y#continue
Transparent, right, and Seeuuentee is a moderate. Hahahaha