*Breaking* ~ Obama asserts Executive Privilege over Fast & Furious

So....then.....the buck doesn't stop at the top with CEO's, Administrations, and those who are supposed to be overseeing these operations that they come up with? After all, Holder has admitted this F&F was Obama's baby. Had this happened under Bush would you be saying...."Oh never mind, let them go without finding out who knew what and when and if anything was covered up??"

Of course not.

 

lol hed have to be on a hook to get off one.

 

we know who knew....the ATF field office said it was their decision.

but lets find soemthing to pin on holder....

 

Don't need to...we have the guns from the incident.

 

I'm beginning to deeply respect your unflinching support of Holder and hereby pledge should he crash and burn, I'll not say I told you so...

 

you should, because I would/will do the same lol

I dont know that Holder is an angel in all this. but I think EP has a legitimate purpose, and if we dont like it we should change the law

 

oh. so now you ARE admitting that this didn't go on under the Bush admin. You're right it didn't. Eric HOlder has admitted it today. You guys make this political. Obama and Holder made this political when they determined to engage in such ill-advised deviousness in order to enact more gun control legislation. AT LEAST conservatives were disappointed and angry with GWB when he betrayed his alleged conservative roots. You guys don't know enough to be angry. So yeah. It's political. You show us that it is.

 

I know at least one couple that's enjoying this and they're not republicans. The Clintons. HAHAHAHAHAH

 

http://www.volokh.com/2012/06/20/is-president-obamas-assertion-of-executive-privilege-valid/

 

I think EP has a legitimate purpose as well, but in this case the timing is horrible and the perception it leaves others is quite negative, less than six months from the election is not the best time for this to be happening. The Obama administration should have quashed this long ago, they only have themselves to blame. Putting partisanship aside, look at the situation. Obama now has to deal with this, which takes away from this campaigning. The fact that there will be a vote to see if his AG is in contempt of Congress, which has never happened before cannot be ignored. Even the most friendly of media outlets must spend some time on this. I don't know if they thought this would go away or what, but regardless of outcome this simply isn't good for Obama at this moment.

Back to political hackery, I think this whole scandal is just more evidence that its amateur hour at the White House.

 

Oh, the webs that are being weaved...

Holder retracts claim Bush team knew about Fast and Furious
June 20, 2012
Paul Bedard
The Washington Examiner

E@SecretsBedard In a second major retraction over its version of the the gun-walking scandal, the Justice Department has retracted Attorney General Eric Holder's charge in a hearing last week that his Bush administration predecessor had been briefed on the affair.

In a memo just released by Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa senator reveals that Holder also didn't apologize to former Attorney General Michael Mukasey for dragging him into the Fast & Furious scandal that is headed for a major legal clash and likely contempt of Congress charge against Holder.

According to Grassley's memo, Justice said that Holder "inadvertently" made the charge against Mukasey in a hearing.

Here is the full text of the Grassley memo:

To: Reporters and Editors

Re: Second retraction of Fast and Furious Assertions

Da: Wednesday, June 20, 2012

The Justice Department has retracted a second statement made to the Senate Judiciary Committee. During a hearing last week, Attorney General Eric Holder claimed that his predecessor, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey, had been briefed about gunwalking in Operation Wide Receiver. Now, the Department is retracting that statement and claiming Holder "inadvertently" made that claim to the Committee. The Department's letter failed to apologize to former Attorney General Mukasey for the false accusation. This is the second major retraction the Justice Department has made in the last seven months. In December 2011, the Department retracted its claim that the ATF had not allowed illegally purchased guns to be trafficked to Mexico. Sen. Chuck Grassley's letter and the Department's response can be viewed here-1.

In addition, the Justice Department released only one page of additional material prior to the Attorney General's meeting on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. It is a page of handwritten notes by a public affairs specialist for the Deputy Attorney General, which the Department says it "just recently discovered." The notes indicate that when Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein met with senior ATF officials on April 28, 2010, regarding the problem of gunwalking in Wide Receiver, the Deputy Attorney General's public affairs specialist also attended the meeting. These notes can be viewed here-2.

The notes indicate that Fast and Furious was also a topic discussed at the meeting, in addition to Wide Receiver. These notes further corroborate contemporaneous emails in 2010 that show Criminal Division Chief Lanny Breuer and Weinstein seemed to have been more concerned about the press implications of gunwalking than they were about making sure ATF ended the practice. (These emails can be viewed here-3.) The notes also undermine the claim that senior DOJ officials failed to "make the connection" between the gunwalking in Wide Receiver--which Breuer admitted to knowing about--and gunwalking in Fast and Furious. In fact, both cases were discussed by senior Department leadership and senior ATF leadership.

Grassley made the following comment on these developments.

"This is the second time in nearly seven months that the Department has gotten its facts wrong about gunwalking. Attorney General Holder accused Attorney General Mukasey, without producing any evidence, of having been briefed on gunwalking in Wide Receiver. The case Attorney General Mukasey was briefed on, Hernandez, is fundamentally different from both Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious since it involved cooperation with the Mexican government. Attorney General Holder's retraction should have included an apology to the former Attorney General.

"In his eagerness to blame the previous administration, Attorney General Holder got his facts wrong. And his tactic didn't bring us any closer to understanding how a bad policy evolved and continued. Bad policy is bad policy, regardless of how many administrations carried it out. Ironically, the only document produced yesterday by the Department appears to show that senior officials in the Attorney General's own Department were strategizing about how to keep gunwalking in both Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious under wraps."

http://washingtonexaminer.com/holde...m-knew-about-fast-and-furious/article/2500157

 

Once Obama and Holder are out of office they can still prosecute them on this case correct? I hope they just don't stop after he resigns/leaves office.

 

Hell, I'm still waiting for Holder to explain why he dropped the voter intimidation charges against the New Black Panther Party back in 2009.

It would also be nice if he could explain why charges were never filed against the leaders of the NBP party regarding the public hit they placed on George Zimmerman. Not that I think Zimmerman is innocent, but he certainly deserves protection under the law.

F & F is just one more added to the list of the Obama admin's DOJ injustices. What does it take for people to wake up?

 

Well, they can. But God willing Obama lose the election, do not expect it to happen. For the Romney Administration to pursue Obama or Holder afterwards would not play well, especially with other issues needing effort.

If I may cite a precedent. GWB invoked Executive Privilege regarding an investigation into the campaign finances of Bill Clinton after Slick was out of office. He did it to squash the investigation, and move forward. It is also the closest EP instance to what is happening now, as it went to internal documents beyond strict advisory conversations between the WH and others. It may not have passed the EP stink test, had a criminal investigation of Clinton continued, a precedent established by SCOTUS with Nixon. But as it was President Bush essentially saying to drop going after Clinton, it died there, and no objections were raised.

Ford's pardon of Nixon was in the same genre. We gotta move on.

 

Absolutely. A murder has been committed during the operation of F & F. Even if the murder never took place, the DOJ players are still responsible for the debacle.

 

OK.

When someone at the local office pleads "guilty" and goes to jail without squealing on their boss in Washington then Holder can claim he did nothing wrong.

 

If you have to ask then you know nothing about procedure ... but plenty of emotion ...

 

Why hasn't this leaked out with all the other stuff that leaked? Oh right that stuff was leaked by Obama.

 

I think its stupid, no matter who the president.

However I want to know why this officer is dead. do you not care he is dead?

 

With months to go before the election Obama is insuring that his own cover ups and intransegence are going to go off in his own face and doom his reelection hopes (which were very slim anyway). He is Richard Nixon incarnate.

 

It seems to me that you would be thrilled to have these documents made public so we can see firsthand how pure Obama is.

Instead, you are happy that he is covering up a tragically failed operation, likely, due to his involvement.

Bottom line is, you just dont care if the guy is a criminal who caused the deaths of many, many people. And you dont care that his was done in attempt to subvert a constitutional amendment.

Pure political hackery. How is it possible to have NO morals?

 

I'm more interested in procedure ... say for instance, resident right-wingers are in hysteria that Obama is gonna be impeached ... when you don't even know what happens next after Holder is held in contempt ...

 

Oh please...that would have ended the committee on the first day. You know that's nt the truth, why are insulting yourself here? Are you that desperate?

 

Would you want to know why this plan went wrong and why Terry is dead?

 

If one can't see the parallel to Robert Mugabe or Idi Amin with this move, there is no hope.