Project Gunrunner (Fast & Furious) Part II

Discussion in 'Gun Control' started by onalandline, Nov 7, 2011.

  1. Danct

    Danct New Member

    Joined:
    Oct 16, 2009
    Messages:
    3,511
    Likes Received:
    5
    Trophy Points:
    0



    Irregardless of the circumstances of the investigations, the fact remains that the truth WILL come out. History shows us that the truth will always find its way out of these situations and I have no doubt it will here too. I'd advise those who would rush to judgement, to wait for the full story.
     
  2. Danct

    Danct New Member

    Joined:
    Oct 16, 2009
    Messages:
    3,511
    Likes Received:
    5
    Trophy Points:
    0



    Oh my!!!!

    Hide the children and lock up the shed,......... they're coming for your guns!


    Wait,.......... haven't we heard this song before?
     
  3. Bondo

    Bondo Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Dec 13, 2010
    Messages:
    2,768
    Likes Received:
    251
    Trophy Points:
    83
    Ayuh,... Right,... Just like Reno's fiasco in Waco,....

    All We got there was the Offical story, 'n Nothin' more....

    If not for the court trial, We'd have gotten the same Bullship story 'bout Ruby Ridge....
     
  4. Danct

    Danct New Member

    Joined:
    Oct 16, 2009
    Messages:
    3,511
    Likes Received:
    5
    Trophy Points:
    0



    Figures that you ally yourself with pedophiles and criminals. What was the government thinking!
     
  5. onalandline

    onalandline Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2008
    Messages:
    9,976
    Likes Received:
    132
    Trophy Points:
    63
    While the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was spending a year and a half supplying weapons to Mexican drug cartels, did he really have no idea what was going on?

    Although documentary evidence strongly indicates that Holder’s Department of Justice has engaged in a cover-up of “Fast and Furious” in order to protect Holder/Obama appointees, is Holder actually innocent?

    Any time you have to judge a person’s veracity, it is important to take into account that person’s prior record of honesty or dishonesty. That a person has often lied in the past does not necessarily mean he is lying today. But considering Eric Holder’s established record of dishonesty and dissimulation, there is absolutely no reason to take him at his word on “Fast and Furious” today.

    A “Forgetful” Nature
    Holder has recently claimed that racism is one reason he is being criticized for “Operation Fast and Furious.” While there is no evidence to support his claim, there is plentiful evidence that Holder himself perverts law enforcement for racist and other purposes.

    Prior to serving as attorney general for President Barack Obama, Holder served as deputy attorney general for President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno. In that capacity, he helped lead what the White House called its “all-out offensive on guns” in 2000.

    He had other duties as well, among them responsibility for making recommendations for presidential pardons. Among the most notorious was for the fugitive plutocrat Marc Rich.

    Beginning in the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Justice began 15 years of attempting to dismantle Marc Rich’s criminal empire. Among Rich’s crimes was illegally violating the U.S. embargo against Iran, funneling money to the Iranian tyrants while they were holding Americans hostage.

    In 1983, Rich was indicted for violating the Iran embargo and for $48 million in tax evasion. At the time it was the biggest federal tax fraud indictment ever. He was in Switzerland at the time, and refused to return to the United States to face charges. He promptly earned a spot on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.

    In 1995, Holder was the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, in charge of all federal civil and criminal cases being brought in the District. Holder sued a company, Clarendon Ltd., whose previous name had been “Marc Rich & Company International.” Being controlled by a fugitive, the company was ineligible for government contracts, but Rich’s involvement was concealed so that Clarendon could win federal contracts to provide metal to the U.S. Mint.

    After being sued by Holder’s office, Clarendon agreed in April 1995 to pay the government $1.2 million. The company admitted that it should have disclosed “Rich’s substantial indirect ownership.”

    Holder’s office immediately sent out press releases bragging about Holder’s big victory against Marc Rich. As reported in The Wall Street Journal on April 13, 1995, “U.S. Attorney Eric Holder said the agreement ends an investigation into the company’s contracts to supply $45 million in coinage metal to the U.S. Mint.”

    In the meantime, while Marc Rich was living in Europe as a fugitive from justice, his ex-wife, Denise Rich, was donating lavishly to the Clinton presidential library, the Hillary Clinton Senate campaign and to other Democrats.

    Denise Rich made the brilliant move of hiring Jack Quinn to lobby for Marc Rich. Quinn, formerly Clinton’s White House counsel, happened to be very close to Vice President Al Gore. It was also common knowledge that Holder wanted to be attorney general if Gore won the 2000 election.

    So in 1999, Quinn approached Holder on behalf of Rich. Two years later, when Congress made Holder testify under oath about the Rich pardon, Holder said that when Quinn asked Holder to help Rich, “Mr. Rich’s name was unfamiliar to me.”

    Of course, those words are very hard to believe in light of Holder’s efforts a few years before in touting himself for his lawsuit that exposed Rich’s secret control of Clarendon.

    Supposedly not knowing anything about Marc Rich, Deputy Attorney General Holder contacted the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York City and attempted to get them to settle their criminal case against Rich for a deal that would involve no prison time. The New York office refused.

    The next approach was to try to get a presidential pardon for Rich. Normally, a pardon for Rich would have been impossible. The U.S. Department of Justice has a long-established rule that it will not consider pardon requests for fugitives.

    Normally, when a convict requests a pardon, the Department of Justice headquarters in D.C. solicits input from the U.S. Attorney’s Office that handled the prosecution. In the Rich criminal case, that was the Office for the Southern District of New York. The New York office was fiercely opposed to a pardon for Rich, and could have provided the D.C. headquarters with a thorough explanation of the scope and magnitude of Rich’s misdeeds.

    Telling Quinn that the New York prosecutors would “howl” if they found out that Rich was seeking a pardon, Holder told Quinn to submit the pardon request directly to the White House, thereby keeping the New York prosecutors unaware. As a House committee later found, Holder was a “willing participant in the plan to keep the Justice Department from knowing about and opposing” the pardon.

    Holder’s written memo to President Clinton about the Rich pardon was based almost entirely on information provided by Rich’s own lawyer.

    President Clinton waited until his last day in office to announce all his pardons. The Rich pardon immediately became a public controversy, and so in February 2011 the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee conducted an investigative hearing. The House Government Operations Committee also called Holder to testify under oath.

    As with Holder’s 2010-2011 testimony on “Fast and Furious,” the core of his defense was that he had little, if any, idea what was going on.

    He told Congress that at the time when he pushed the pardon, and circumvented the New York prosecutors, he had “gained only a passing familiarity with the underlying facts of the Rich case.”

    The U.S. House Government Operations Committee presumed that Holder was telling the truth under oath. Thus, the committee reported that the “sum total” of Holder’s “knowledge about Rich came from a page of talking points provided to him by Jack Quinn in 2000.” The committee declared Holder’s conduct “unconscionable.”

    Continued on next post...
     
  6. onalandline

    onalandline Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2008
    Messages:
    9,976
    Likes Received:
    132
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Playing The Race Card
    At least Holder did not claim that people who criticized his conduct in the Rich pardon were racist. Yet he did recently make that charge against people who criticize him for “Operation Fast and Furious.”

    In a December 2011 interview with The New York Times, Holder said that the “more extreme segment” of his current critics are against him because he is black: “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him. Both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

    Unfortunately, The New York Times did not ask any follow-up questions to Holder’s outrageous assertions. More than any other major newspaper, The New York Times treated the Holder DOJ’s malfeasance, including “Fast and Furious,” as if the newspaper were a public relations firm for Holder.

    A more serious interviewer might have asked some follow-up questions, such as, “Who, specifically, do you think is criticizing you because of your race?” Or, “The National Rifle Association has criticized you and has previously criticized President Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, who is white. Does this suggest that your most influential critics are not motivated by race?”

    The odd thing about Holder playing the race card is that Holder himself, as attorney general, has established a record of race-based law enforcement.

    Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in his confirmation hearing, Holder said, “I think in some ways you can measure the success of an attorney general’s tenure by how the Civil Rights Division has done.”

    The racism and dishonesty of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under Eric Holder’s control prompted civil rights attorney Christian Adams to go public and quit. His new book, Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department, blows the whistle on how Holder’s Civil Rights Division is opposed to equal and fair enforcement of the law, and rather tolerant of election fraud—as long as the right people are doing the fraud. Another former Civil Rights Division attorney, Hans von Spakovsky, who is now a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has also written extensively about malfeasance at the Holder DOJ.

    On Election Day 2008, some members of a racist group called the New Black Panther Party showed up at polls in Philadelphia, frightening white voters and poll watchers. Among the thugs was King Samir Shabazz, brandishing a nightstick.

    Over strong objections from DOJ prosecutors, Holder’s team at DOJ ordered that the New Black Panther cases be dismissed, after the prosecutors had already won convictions.

    Trying to justify the dismissals, on July 13, 2009, Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich sent a letter to Congress about the New Black Panther case. The letter said that the case against one of the Panthers was dismissed because he “was a resident of the apartment building where the polling place was located.” To the contrary, the man did not live there. He was not hanging around the polling place because he just happened to be in his own building.

    Weich, incidentally, sent another false letter to Congress in February 2011, insisting that the government had never permitted “gun walking.” (That’s the term for guns being acquired and transported by known criminals who were not kept under surveillance, as in “Fast and Furious.”)

    Like the gun-walking letter, the Weich letter about the Panther case was later retracted when its falsehood was exposed.

    When Congress and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights opened investigations of the New Black Panther dismissals, Holder blocked DOJ employees from complying with subpoenas to testify.

    Fraud At The Polls
    One part of the Civil Rights Division is the Voting Rights Section, whose job is to enforce federal laws that protect the right to vote and that prevent voting fraud. Among those laws is Section 8 of the Motor Voter Act—the law requires that states remove from the voting rolls dead people, felons who are ineligible to vote and people who have moved away.

    The importance of Section 8 is obvious. The votes of genuine voters are diluted when impersonators illegally vote under the name of a dead person or of a person who no longer lives in the area. In a close election, impersonators can change the result.

    In some places the problem is quite serious. For example, in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, the number of people on the voter rolls is 18 percent greater than the number of adult citizens who live in the parish. Four other Louisiana parishes have similar problems. (A parish in Louisiana is equivalent to a county.)

    Yet in November 2009, then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes held a luncheon at which she announced to the Voting Rights Section that the Holder DOJ had “no interest” in enforcing Section 8. As she put it, “We are only interested in laws which increase turnout.”

    During 2009, the head of the Voting Rights Section, Chris Coates, attempted to initiate investigations in eight states that apparently were violating Section 8 by keeping large numbers of ineligible persons on the voting rolls. Every one of those potential investigations was squashed by Obama/Holder appointees in the DOJ.

    Holder’s team also told Coates that when he was interviewing DOJ job applicants, he could not ask them if they would enforce laws fairly, without regard to the victim’s race.

    Appropriately, the Holder DOJ has investigated some cases of voter fraud, such as falsified absentee ballots—when the fraud is alleged to take place in white majority counties. In black majority counties, the Holder DOJ appears more reluctant to enforce the law. Even when Alabama Secretary of State Beth Chapman sent the DOJ proof of ongoing vote fraud in Hale County, Ala., Holder ignored her plea to send federal election monitors.

    Another very low priority in the Holder DOJ is enforcing the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, which protects the voting rights of military personnel. The 2009 law requires that states send absentee ballots to military voters at least 45 days before an election and that every military installation have a voter registration office. The DOJ did not even get around to telling military installations about this requirement until after the 2010 election was over.

    As Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, wrote, “Leading up to the 2010 mid-terms, we could see that DOJ enforcement was not what Congress intended—and not what our troops deserved. … If DOJ spent as much time and effort enforcing the … Act as they did trying to get convicted felons back on the voter rolls, thousands of military voters might have gotten their ballots on time.”

    In the upcoming 2012 election, the Supreme Court, and therefore the Second Amendment, hangs in the balance. With a billion dollars of campaign funds, President Obama will be a formidable candidate.

    Should the election come down to a few close states, it is possible that the election could be determined by a few hundred or a few thousand votes. With the Holder Department of Justice so obviously tolerant of voter fraud, election participation by pro-Constitution activists will be all the more important—so that the margin of victory for pro-rights candidates is greater than the amount of fraudulent “votes” that may be recorded for the anti-rights ones.

    Source
     
  7. Texsdrifter

    Texsdrifter Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Feb 24, 2012
    Messages:
    3,140
    Likes Received:
    171
    Trophy Points:
    63
    The election will come down to a few states. The rest of us are just observers.
    The three most important are:
    Florida if republicans want to win they have to win Florida Obama won by 2.8% in 2008 they have 29 electoral votes.
    Pennsylvania a long shot Obama won by 10% in 2008 they have 20 electoral votes.
    Ohio could go either way Obama won by 4.6% in 2008 they have 18 electoral votes.
    There are more but if republicans take Florida and one of the other two they would more than likely win. If you want to see if you are in a state that will have a choice I will post link below.
    http://conservapedia.com/swing_state
     
  8. onalandline

    onalandline Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2008
    Messages:
    9,976
    Likes Received:
    132
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Internal memo shows ATF rank and file don't trust the brass:

    Top leaders at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, already under fire from lawmakers in the wake of the “Fast and Furious” debacle, also get harsh marks from the men and women who serve under them, according to an internal survey.

    An ATF memo obtained by FoxNews.com reveals that rank-and-file workers at the beleaguered federal agency, where whistleblowers who first alerted lawmakers to the “gun-walking” scandal say they were threatened or even punished, don’t trust the agency’s leaders.

    “A key area in which ATF fell short was leadership,” the e-mail from ATF Headquarters, describing the results of the internal survey, reads.

    “Most troubling were responses to the question – ‘My senior leaders maintain high standards of honesty and integrity.’”

    Just 44 percent of ATF employees said that their leaders maintained such standards last year, according to the Partnership for Public Service, the non-profit that administers the annual survey to government employees.

    On “leadership effectiveness” in general, ATF scored a 40.5, placing the agency nearly last among government agencies, at 215th out of 228 agencies surveyed. That rating was the first since the "Fast and Furious" scandal broke, and it is down 10 percentage points from the year before.

    Asked by FoxNews.com about the survey, ATF spokesman Drew Wade acknowledged the Fast and Furious scandal has taken a toll on morale.

    "The controversies plaguing ATF over the last year have weighed heavily on the morale of employees and their faith in senior leadership," Wade said. "Mistakes were made."

    But he said ATF leadership is working hard to change.

    “Acting Director [B. Todd] Jones has put new leaders in place in new positions to enhance the quality of leadership and take ATF in the right direction. The new leadership team is working hard to earn [the] trust again of employees," Wade said.

    Vince Cefalu, an agent who helped expose the “Fast and Furious” scandal, said it is "too soon to tell" whether ATF will turn things around. For now, he says, the survey results don’t surprise him.

    “Guess I and [the other whistleblowers] weren’t the only disgruntled malcontents, were we?” he said, sarcastically referring to what he believes were attempts to marginalize him and others who came forward.

    Cefalu says his own situation is a case study in ATF dishonesty. The ATF attempted to fire Cefalu last year, after the “Fast and Furious” scandal broke, but so far has been unable to do so because Cefalu has accused them in court of retaliating against a whistleblower. Now, he said, he is given no assignments.

    “I am sitting in Lake Tahoe drawing $150,000 [a year from ATF] to do absolutely nothing,” he said.

    Others at ATF who took the survey told FoxNews.com that ATF's treatment of whistleblowers affected the ratings they gave.

    "I gave them a low rating," said an ATF manager who spoke to FoxNews.com on condition of anonymity.

    "In the midst of the Fast and Furious investigation... [ATF leadership] sent a letter to Senator [Charles] Grassley [R-Iowa], saying ‘these whistleblowers are lying,’" he explained. "There's no integrity."

    He added that while ATF says it has now replaced old leadership with new players, the old leaders never get fired.

    "Where are we, 15, 16 months outside of Brian Terry's murder? Nobody's been held accountable for anything," he said, referring to a border patrol agent who was killed with an illegal weapon that was allowed to enter Mexico as part of operation Fast and Furious.

    The problem goes deeper than Fast and Furious, he added.

    "When a manager gets caught in an unethical or unlawful act, the only ‘punishment’ that comes with it is a taxpayer-funded move. You'll retain full pay, full benefits, and we'll pay to move you, usually to headquarters in DC."

    ATF scores well in some other aspects of the employee survey. In “pay,” it rates eighth out of all 228 agencies. The average salary for an ATF employee is $96,370 per year.

    "Our pay and our benefits are good," a special agent, who spoke to FoxNews.com on condition of anonymity, said. "Some people work for it and earn it, and others not so much."

    He added that in his experience, more than half of the agency’s leadership was "more problem than solution."

    "They're abusive, self-serving characters," he said.

    Despite their grievances, the agents interviewed by Fox expressed hope that the bureau will get its act together.

    “I think there is an air of, 'we want to get better,'" Cefalu said. "They haven't implemented anything yet, but the initial steps are transparent and up-front."

    Cefalu and the special agent interviewed said that Tom Brandon, the new deputy director at ATF, is held in high regard by field agents.

    "I think he will try to change things," the special agent said. "Whether he will have the ability, due to the culture here, is anybody's guess."

    Source
     
  9. onalandline

    onalandline Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2008
    Messages:
    9,976
    Likes Received:
    132
    Trophy Points:
    63
    'Fast and Furious' Exposes White House Anti-Gun Agenda, Coverup:

    Katie Pavlich’s new book, “Fast and Furious,” assembles the devastating evidence that implicates the Obama administration for its botched gun-walking operation and ensuing coverup to mislead Congress and the American people.

    Few journalists have devoted as much time reporting on Fast and Furious as Pavlich. As the news editor of Townhall, she has asked questions the mainstream media ignored. Now her book pieces the story together for a complete picture of how a government-run operation turned deadly.

    She’ll speak on Tuesday at noon ET at The Bloggers Briefing. Breitbart TV, in partnership with The Heritage Foundation, will air it live.

    Operation Fast and Furious began in 2009 as an effort to eliminate high-level arms trafficking networks. Guns were allowed to “walk,” and rather than arresting straw purchasers and cartel buyers, hundreds were used to commit crimes in the United States and Mexico. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed with one in 2010, and an estimated 1,400 guns remain missing.

    As previously documented by Breitbart News Network, Pavlich’s book contains new information questioning Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s testimony to Congress as well as the media’s efforts to shield the Obama administration from criticism.

    The book details President Obama’s lifelong mission to subvert the Second Amendment, long before he was seeking federal office. Pavlich also documents how Fast and Furious plays into his administration’s anti-gun agenda. She cites a Washington Post story from Dec. 15, 2010, before details of Fast and Furious had emerged, in which federal authorities attempt to blame the rise in gun violence on U.S. gun shops.

    The Post story referred to Project Gunrunner as an operation to inspect, interdict, and seize guns from straw purchasers. It did not mention an ATF operation to allow straw purchasers to buy guns for the Mexican drug cartels. Some of the very same ATF and Justice Department officials who blamed American gun shops for the spike in Mexican gun crime had in fact been helping the drug cartels to help themselves for over a year.

    The book provides information from sources and whistleblowers who offer a behind-the-scenes perspective about the botched operation. One of them, ATF agent John Dodson, was punished for his decision to question why arrests weren’t made before the guns fell into the hands of ruthless criminals in Mexico.

    Source
     
  10. onalandline

    onalandline Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2008
    Messages:
    9,976
    Likes Received:
    132
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Issa to Holder: You can still avoid contempt if you give up Fast and Furious documents:

    A spokeswoman for House oversight committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa told The Daily Caller that Attorney General Eric Holder could still avoid the contempt of Congress proceedings on the horizon — if he cooperates with the congressional subpoena he’s thus far failed to comply with.

    “The Justice Department can still avoid contempt,” Issa spokeswoman Becca Watkins told TheDC. “They need to pledge their cooperation and stop stonewalling on critical documents outlined by the committee in the draft contempt report.”

    Watkins said those “critical documents” include “what high ranking officials knew about Fast and Furious and when they knew it, information about informants and their roles, and how the Justice Department changed its view from denying that gunwalking occurred to acknowledging that Fast and Furious was fundamentally flawed.”

    Holder has outright failed to comply with the subpoena Issa served him in October 2011 on Fast and Furious. That subpoena contains 22 parts, and Holder has failed to fulfill each and every one of those categories. For 13 of the categories, Holder has provided no documents whatsoever, and for the other nine categories, Holder remains far from compliant, as TheDC documented in full late last week.

    All indications are that contempt proceedings for Holder will move forward, assuming he doesn’t produce the documents. Issa released the lengthy contempt of Congress citation draft last week to Democrats and Republicans on his committee, and Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar is set to lead a “special order” on the House floor later this week. A special order is an official vehicle for House members to voice their concerns about Fast and Furious, the Department of Justice’s stonewalling tactics and Holder’s continued failure to comply with congressional subpoenas.

    Both the special order and the contempt citation draft’s release indicate House leadership support. (RELATED: Full coverage of Operation Fast and Furious)

    Currently, 127 House members think Holder should resign or be fired over Fast and Furious, have expressed “no confidence” in him via a formal House resolution, or both. Three U.S. senators, two sitting governors and presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney have joined those House members in demanding Holder’s removal from office.

    Source
     
  11. onalandline

    onalandline Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2008
    Messages:
    9,976
    Likes Received:
    132
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Holder failed to produce Fast & Furious documents at the latest congressional hearing, and now this...

    Obama asserts executive privilege over ‘Fast and Furious’ documents:

    Justice Department officials on Wednesday said President Obama has asserted executive privilege over documents sought by a House committee in an investigation of the botched “Fast and Furious” operation.

    The last-minute move came just prior to the start of a scheduled hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on a contempt on Congress citation against Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who has refused since October to honor a committee subpoena seeking the documents.

    In a letter to Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, California Republican, a Justice Department official said the privilege applies to documents that explain how the department learned there were problems with the investigation, which allowed more than 2,000 weapons to be “walked” to drug smugglers in Mexico.

    A contempt vote against Mr. Holder became likely after he and Mr. Issa failed to reach an agreement over turning over the documents during a 20-minute meeting Tuesday on Capitol Hill. Mr. Holder did not turn over any records at the Tuesday meeting and later told reporters he would not turn over Fast and Furious documents unless Mr. Issa agreed to another meeting, where he said he would explain what is in the materials.

    He said he wanted an assurance from Mr. Issa that the transfer of the records would satisfy the committee’s subpoena.

    “I had hoped that after this evening’s meeting I would be able to tell you that the department had delivered documents that would justify the postponement of tomorrow’s vote on contempt,” Mr. Issa said. “The department told the committee on Thursday that it had documents it could produce that would answer our questions.

    “The assertion of executive privilege raises monumental questions,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee who first began the Fast and Furious investigation.

    “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,” he said.

    “The questions from Congress go to determining what happened in a disastrous government program for accountability and so that it’s never repeated again.”

    Source
     
  12. Greataxe

    Greataxe Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jan 20, 2011
    Messages:
    9,400
    Likes Received:
    1,348
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Holder is just one of Obama's stooges. If this review goes before the Supreme Court, then there will not be enough votes by some of his other plants, Kagan and Sotomeyer, or the other leftists, Ginsberg and Breyer, to justify executive privledge.

    Boot the radicals.
     
  13. onalandline

    onalandline Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2008
    Messages:
    9,976
    Likes Received:
    132
    Trophy Points:
    63
    One thing is for sure. Holder will fall before Obama...then Obama in November.
     
  14. onalandline

    onalandline Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2008
    Messages:
    9,976
    Likes Received:
    132
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Operation Fast and Furious: When Will We Know the Truth?

    On the night of December 15, 2010, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was shot and killed by an untraceable assault weapon that was deliberately handed to Mexican drug lords by U.S. officials via Operation Fast and Furious. Ever since, the Terry family and Americans across the nation have asked how this could have happened.

    And ever since, Attorney General Eric Holder has stonewalled Congress in its attempts to find these answers. Yesterday, President Obama joined this stonewalling effort, asserting executive privilege over many of the documents about the operation that Congress had subpoenaed but still had not received.

    Executive privilege is legitimate when properly invoked. But even then, the Supreme Court has maintained that it is not absolute. The Department of Justice (DOJ) must provide a compelling rationale for each assertion. Shielding wrongdoing has never been a qualifying rationale.

    Heritage legal expert and former Department of Justice counsel Todd Gaziano explains:

    First, the Supreme Court in United States v. Nixon (1974) held that executive privilege cannot be invoked at all if the purpose is to shield wrongdoing. The courts held that [President] Nixon’s purported invocation of executive privilege was illegitimate, in part, for that reason. There is reason to suspect that this might be the case in the Fast and Furious cover-up and stonewalling effort. Congress needs to get to the bottom of that question to prevent an illegal invocation of executive privilege and further abuses of power. That will require an index of the withheld documents and an explanation of why each of them is covered by executive privilege—and more.

    It is now up to Congress to ascertain the specific reasoning for executive privilege with every withheld document. Even in the unlikely case it is determined that this was a proper invocation of executive privilege, the administration is still not off the hook to inform Congress of what they know.

    Gaziano explains further:

    The President is required when invoking executive privilege to try to accommodate the other branches’ legitimate information needs in some other way. For example, it does not harm executive power for the President to selectively waive executive privilege in most instances, even if it hurts him politically by exposing a terrible policy failure or wrongdoing among his staff. The history of executive–congressional relations is filled with accommodations and waivers of privilege. In contrast to voluntary waivers of privilege, Watergate demonstrates that wrongful invocations of privilege can seriously damage the office of the presidency when Congress and the courts impose new constraints on the President’s discretion or power (some rightful and some not).

    President Obama now owns the Fast and Furious scandal. It is entirely up to him whether he wants to live up to the transparency promises he made four years ago, or further develop a shroud of secrecy that would make President Richard Nixon blush. If the stonewalling continues, and the privilege is not waived, it will be up to the American people and the media to demand the reasoning for the cover-up.

    It is also time for the media to begin responsibly covering this scandal. For more than 16 months, only a handful of reporters have appropriately researched the facts and sought answers. Most members of the national media would not even acknowledge the existence of the scandal. Reportedly, NBC Nightly News ran its first story on the scandal just this past Tuesday.

    The national media must now follow the lead of their colleagues CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson or Townhall’s Katie Pavlich and investigate the specific facts and details of the operation and administration involvement. Attkisson, as you may remember, was screamed and cussed at by White House spokesman Eric Schultz in October for asking questions about Operation Fast and Furious.

    Answers must be demanded. When was the first time President Obama was briefed on this operation? Given his previous conflicting testimony, when in fact did Attorney General Eric Holder become involved? What exactly did he know and when did he know it?

    Despite the fact that Mexico was left in the dark by the Obama administration, this was still an international operation. If Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must approve the Keystone pipeline, wouldn’t she also be consulted on this cross-border operation?

    Liberals will try and pretend this operation that began in mid-2009 is connected to former President George W. Bush’s administration. The media should challenge this false assertion. Operation Wide Receiver in 2006 did not remotely resemble Fast and Furious, as National Review’s Andrew McCarthy has ably examined. Mexico helped coordinate it, and there was traceable controlled delivery. Even Holder admitted in testimony that you cannot “equate the two.”

    We will also hear that this is “election-year politics.” The problem with that refrain is that this investigation has been ongoing since early 2011, well before campaign season started. It has been Attorney General Holder’s evasiveness that has dragged this process closer to Election Day.

    If it were not for conservative media outlets, bloggers, a few dogged reporters and the steadfastness of House Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), this troubling scandal would have been buried long ago.

    A brave American border agent is dead. At least 200 Mexicans have been slaughtered with these weapons. Drug violence on the border remains unabated. Now, President Obama is attempting to conceal the facts of what happened. This is an opportunity for Congress and the media to demand sunlight.

    Source
     
  15. JIMV

    JIMV Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Oct 19, 2009
    Messages:
    25,440
    Likes Received:
    852
    Trophy Points:
    113
  16. onalandline

    onalandline Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2008
    Messages:
    9,976
    Likes Received:
    132
    Trophy Points:
    63
    [video=youtube;6QCvqwnix5g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&v=6QCvqwnix5g[/video]
     
  17. onalandline

    onalandline Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2008
    Messages:
    9,976
    Likes Received:
    132
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Mexican Drug Cartel Used "Fast and Furious" Gun in Failed Assassination Plot:

    Just when you think the news about the disastrous "Fast and Furious" gun-walking operation can't possibly get any worse, a U.S. government report has disclosed that Mexican drug cartel operatives used a firearm from the infamous scheme in a failed attempt to assassinate a high-ranking Mexican law enforcement official.

    According to a recent Daily Caller article, the gun "was seized in Tijuana in connection with a drug cartel's conspiracy to kill the police chief of Tijuana, Baja California, who later became the Juárez police chief."

    An August 6, El Paso Times article gives further details:

    The firearm was found Feb. 25, 2010, during an arrest of a criminal cell associated with Teodoro "El Teo" García Simental and Raydel "El Muletas" López Uriarte, allies of the Sinaloa cartel.

    Tijuana police said they arrested four suspects in March 2010 in connection with a failed attempt to take out Julián Leyzaola, and that the suspects allegedly confessed to conspiring to assassinate the police chief on orders from Tijuana cartel leaders.

    The firearm in question was traced back to the "Fast and Furious" operation.

    Late last month, U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) released a nearly 2,400-page report--"Fast and Furious: The Anatomy of a Failed Operation"--based on interviews from hearings and reviews of thousands of pages of documents.

    The Daily Caller article also notes that, in addition to this latest revelation, the congressional report also revealed new evidence that Obama administration BATFE officials sought to cover up the "Fast and Furious" connection to a death other than that of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

    The article reports that Mario Gonzalez, the brother of then-Mexican prosecutor Patricia Gonzalez, was killed in early November 2010. And according to the congressional report, two of the firearms found at Mario Gonzalez's murder scene were tied to "Fast and Furious."

    Source
     
  18. onalandline

    onalandline Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2008
    Messages:
    9,976
    Likes Received:
    132
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Looming report the final word on 'Furious'? Findings to hit at peak political time:

    The Justice Department's lead internal investigator is finalizing his much-anticipated report on Operation Fast and Furious, which lawmakers and whistleblowers alike hope will bring final answers and accountability over the botched gun-running probe.

    And while whistleblowers who spoke to Fox News predict an "all-encompassing" and "accurate and fair" account in the report, some believe Inspector General Michael Horowitz's account may ultimately become political Play-Doh, with each side shaping it to their liking or pounding it as unreliable.

    Republicans have also questioned the impartiality of Horowitz, who works inside Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department, and say they "would prefer" to have someone with no connection to top department officials.

    The report, expected to be released within weeks, will come just months after Holder was found in contempt of Congress, mostly along party lines, for withholding documents from a congressional inquiry on Fast and Furious, in what has become the biggest law enforcement controversy of President Obama's first term.

    Horowitz declined to be interviewed by Fox News in advance of the release. But two of the initial whistleblowers interviewed by investigators said the report could contain some surprises.

    "The public's perception is going to be probably vastly different than what comes out in the (inspector general's) report," Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent Larry Alt told Fox News. Alt said he hopes the report "puts into writing" who is ultimately responsible for the program.

    A recent report from Republican lawmakers conducting their own investigation casts much of the blame on the former head of ATF's Phoenix office and four ATF officials in Washington. A second report is also underway, and will focus on the alleged culpability of Holder and top Justice Department officials.

    But Alt said the first report didn't "truly explore" the impact of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix on the case. Another whistleblower, Peter Forcelli, agreed.

    While ATF deserves a "hammering" for Fast and Furious, federal prosecutors were "at least as culpable" for, among other things, telling ATF agents they didn't have enough evidence to stop cars or otherwise seize weapons. "That's what I hope the (inspector general's) report will spell out," he said.

    Alt and Forcelli said they hoped the inspector general "sheds light" on whether there was a high-level plan to let guns slip into Mexico, as many have alleged, or whether what started as a smaller investigation just got out of control.

    "I don't believe that the intent was, 'Hey, let's just let all these guns flow down there,'" Forcelli told Fox News. "I know people speculate that that was a plan and part of how to work this case," he said, but flooding Mexico with guns to "put pieces of the puzzle together" was not "a planned 'tactic.'"

    Alt used to agree, believing until last year that Fast and Furious was "a poorly managed investigation that spun out of control." But he has since become convinced "the intent was to have (guns) go to Mexico and follow them down there."

    Alt cited a January 2010 "briefing paper," in which the ATF said its strategy was "to allow the transfer of firearms" to continue, so gun traffickers could be identified. Alt hadn't seen the memo until it was uncovered by Republican staffers, who argued it proves guns were meant "to walk permanently."

    But the briefing paper was silent on that issue, and Alt said he doesn't "have anything (to) dispute" that the original plan may have envisioned seizing firearms before they crossed the border. Either way, Alt and Forcelli said a "perfect storm" of factors let guns get away.

    The operation, launched in late 2009, aimed to take down a Mexican gun-smuggling organization. The plan enlisted the cooperation of local gun dealers, who would keep ATF informed about sales to suspected "straw buyers," who use their clean criminal records to buy weapons for others.

    Nearly 2,000 weapons were purchased over the course of several months. Some of the high-powered weapons were eventually discovered at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States, including the December 2010 murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

    "In practice, they walked guns," even if that wasn't ATF's intent, Forcelli said. "In practice, they allowed illegally trafficked firearms to flood into Mexico."

    Now it's up to Horowitz's report to detail exactly what happened and who knew about it.

    Forcelli, who was an agent in ATF Phoenix but not part of the group conducting Fast and Furious, was interviewed repeatedly by Horowitz's office.

    He said investigators asked him about past problems with the U.S. attorney's office, his "interpretation" of prosecutors' decisions, management problems within ATF, and Fast and Furious more generally.

    Republican lawmakers say the Justice Department is stonewalling their investigation, and Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., recently told Fox News the "burden's going to be high" for Horowitz to prove his independence. Horowitz has a long-standing relationship with Criminal Division head Lanny Breuer, who has admitted he learned two years ago about "gun-walking" in a Bush-era investigation but never asked whether similar investigations might still exist.

    Forcelli said Horowitz is "not a political guy," saying his investigators "seemed to really just be interested in getting to the truth."

    "I think we have a fairly clear picture from Congress, but I don't think that Congress can say definitively because I think Congress does not have the (benefit) of all the evidence," Alt said. "The (inspector general) has all the evidence."

    Source
     
  19. onalandline

    onalandline Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2008
    Messages:
    9,976
    Likes Received:
    132
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Mexico detains suspect in 'Fast and Furious' killing:

    MEXICO CITY - Mexican police have detained a man accused of fatally shooting a U.S. Border Patrol agent almost two years ago in Arizona in a botched U.S. operation to track guns smuggled across the border, the government said Friday.

    Federal police detained Jesus Leonel Sanchez Meza on Thursday in Sonora state, which borders Arizona, where agent Brian Terry was shot dead in December 2010, the Public Security Ministry said. The Mexican Attorney General's Office plans to extradite Sanchez Meza to the United States, the ministry said in a statement.

    Two guns found at the scene were traced to a botched U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) sting operation called "Fast and Furious" that allowed weapons to slip across the border. It was not clear, however, if those weapons fired the fatal shots.

    Four others have been accused in the shooting, the ministry said. One is on trial and three others remain fugitives, according to The Associated Press.

    Republicans have criticized U.S. President Barack Obama's administration for allowing the Fast and Furious program, which led to some calls for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign.

    In Fast and Furious federal agents allowed so-called "straw" buyers to purchase weapons at gun shops. The goal was to track the guns to major weapons traffickers and drug cartel leaders in order to arrest and prosecute them.

    In June, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives found Holder, the nation's top law enforcement official, in contempt for withholding documents related to the failed gun-running probe.

    Stay informed with the latest headlines; sign up for our newsletter

    Early this year Terry's family filed a $25 million wrongful-death claim against the U.S. government, saying he was killed because federal investigators allowed guns to fall into the hands of violent criminals.

    The FBI has offered $250,000 for information leading to the capture of Terry's killer.

    Source
     
  20. onalandline

    onalandline Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2008
    Messages:
    9,976
    Likes Received:
    132
    Trophy Points:
    63
    EXCLUSIVE: Long-awaited 'Furious' report places blame on ATF, Justice:

    Dozens of senior-level U.S. government officials turned a blind eye to public safety as they pursued an ill-conceived and poorly managed investigation into gun trafficking in Mexico, according to a long-awaited inspector general's report on Operation Fast and Furious.

    Portions of the Justice Department IG report, which has not been made public, were obtained exclusively by Fox News Channel.

    The report and accompanying accounts cite a failure in leadership and a lack of accountability and oversight up and down the chain of command at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Justice Department itself and other offices. It says many senior executives knew the U.S. was helping traffic guns to Mexico that killed people but did nothing to stop it.

    "We found no evidence in Operation Fast and Furious that the ATF or the (U.S. attorney's office) attempted at any point during the investigation to balance the risks to the public safety against the long-term benefits of identifying trafficking networks and participants," the draft report says.

    Fast and Furious was the anti-gunrunning sting that helped send some 2,000 assault weapons to Mexico under the guise of stopping illegal trafficking. The operation ended only after the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry -- two of the weapons associated with the investigation were found at his murder scene.

    Much of the blame in the report is directed at three ATF managers: Phoenix Agent in Charge Bill Newell, Supervisor Dave Voth and Case Agent Hope MacAllister.

    Their attorneys claim they've been scapegoated. Debra Roth, an attorney for MacAllister, wrote to Inspector General Michael Horowitz that the report "fails to account for the abdication of oversight, guidance and responsibility by ATF headquarters and Main Department of Justice regarding the implementation of what is in essence a strategy to combat an international criminal enterprise."

    The documents obtained by Fox News, while incomplete, provide an early glimpse into the finger-pointing that will follow the expected release later this week or early next week of the complete IG report. Attorney General Eric Holder has said the report, which will be scrutinized on Capitol Hill, will provide him the basis to discipline or fire those found most culpable.

    While the report blames Newell and Voth for poor judgment, attorneys for the two say higher-ups and the entire ATF chain of command were aware of everything they did.

    Both men recall a detailed briefing Voth delivered to senior ATF and DOJ staff in Washington on March 5, 2010. In a Power Point presentation, attended by at least two deputy attorneys general, Voth explained how the operation was run and how almost two-dozen largely unemployed men bought 1,026 assault weapons with $650,000 in just over four months, then smuggled the guns to Mexico while under surveillance.

    "Following the briefing ... Mr. Voth received accolades from his superiors. No one in ATF leadership or at Main Justice raised any concerns with Mr. Voth about the direction of the investigation. If anything, they were encouraging him," Voth attorney Joshua Levy said.

    Attorneys for the three contend that the report's conclusion that the strategy for Fast and Furious was hatched in Phoenix is not true. MacAllister's attorney claims that it was "part of the overall ATF Southwest Border strategy to deal with an international criminal enterprise engaged in firearms trafficking."

    Horowitz said late last week that he expects the full report to be released later this week or early next. He is currently scheduled to testify in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee next Wednesday.

    Source
     
  21. onalandline

    onalandline Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2008
    Messages:
    9,976
    Likes Received:
    132
    Trophy Points:
    63
    'Furious' guns tied to 2010 Juarez massacre, other murders in Mexico:

    For the first time, Mexican victims of crimes tied to the botched Operation Fast and Furious are being identified, including teenagers killed in a 2010 massacre.

    A new report finds dozens of weapons recovered in Mexico have been connected with the ill-fated and ill-conceived anti-gunrunning program. While some Mexican authorities estimate 300 of their citizens have been injured or killed by Fast and Furious guns, little has been known about those weapons south of the U.S. border until now.

    Through the Mexican Freedom of Information Act, Spanish-language network Univision and Fox News obtained a list of 100,000 weapons recovered in Mexico in 2009 and 2010. The guns were then compared with the serial numbers of the 2,000 guns sold in Fast and Furious.

    Univision identified a total of 57 more previously unreported firearms that were bought by straw purchasers monitored by ATF during Operation Fast and Furious, and then recovered in Mexico in sites related to murders, kidnappings and other actions by Mexican hit men and drug cartels.

    In an investigative special that aired on Sunday, Univision revealed one such massacre that was later found to be linked with Fast and Furious.

    It happened in January 2010 in Juarez, Mexico, where cartel members burst into a home killing 16 people -- mostly teenagers -- at a birthday party. While the gunmen were targeting members of a rival gang attending that party, some of the victims were innocent bystanders.
    Family members of those killed have appeared before the Mexican government demanding to know what happened.

    "They are waiting for an answer," said Gerardo Reyes, head of Univision's investigative unit. "They want to know what happened. And why they didn't stop these guns from leaving the U.S. and ending up in these crimes?"

    "They feel helpless," added Reyes. "They don't know what to do. We interviewed one of them and they said ... 'Who's going to pay for this?'"

    It might end up being the U.S. government, should the family of Brian Terry prevail in its wrongful death claim. Terry is the U.S. Border Patrol agent killed in December 2010 in the Arizona desert, and whose murder scene contained weapons linked to Fast and Furious.

    "The people can go and sue in the United States with support of American lawyers and that will be a very interesting development certainly," said former Mexican prosecutor Samuel Gonzalez.

    The report also reveals the botched operation may have played a role in a 2009 massacre, where 18 young men were killed at a rehabilitation center also in Juarez. The massacre was reportedly ordered and carried out by Mexican hit men.

    According to a Mexican army document obtained by Univision, three of the high caliber weapons used in the attack were linked to a gun-tracing operation run by the ATF. The partial transcript obtained by Fox News did not specify whether this was Operation Fast and Furious.

    The Fast and Furious program caught the attention of Congress and the rest of the country after weapons from the operation were found at Terry's murder scene.

    One Justice Department official resigned and another retired after an inspector general report on the probe faulted multiple agencies for letting it get out of hand. Fourteen officials were forwarded for possible disciplinary action.

    Source
     
  22. onalandline

    onalandline Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2008
    Messages:
    9,976
    Likes Received:
    132
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Looks like this may haunt the Obama Administration and Eric Holder for quite some time...

    A Border Patrol agent was killed while patrolling on horseback near the Arizona patrol station named after Brian Terry, another agent killed on duty in 2010:

    8:33AM EST October 3. 2012 - WASHINGTON -- Federal and state authorities launched a vast manhunt along a remote part of the Arizona-Mexico border for three to four suspects in a Tuesday shooting that left one Border Patrol agent dead and another wounded.

    Dozens of investigators in helicopters and on horseback were searching an area as large as 20 miles for the suspects who opened fire on the agents as they approached to check on a tripped ground sensor shortly before 2 a.m.

    The Border Patrol identified the slain agent as Nicolas Ivie, 30.

    Ivie and two other agents were attacked near the location where fellow Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was shot to death in December 2010.

    Terry's murder prompted congressional and Justice Department inquiries into a botched federal gun trafficking investigation that allowed 2,000 firearms to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartel enforcers and other criminals.

    Two weapons linked to that operation -- known as Operation Fast and Furious -- were found at the scene, but the weapon used to kill Terry has not been identified.

    Cochise County Sheriff's Department Cmdr. Marc Denney, whose agency is assisting the FBI, said no weapons have been recovered from Tuesday's attack.

    It also was immediately unclear why the suspects were in the location, a rocky corridor known for human smuggling and drug trafficking about 5 miles from the border.

    "It was basically an ambush," Denney said, adding that it was possible the suspects fled to Mexico following the shooting.

    "They had a little bit of a jump on us," he said. "It is very rocky terrain. We're hoping that they hunkered down somewhere close by so that we have an opportunity to find them.''

    "I am deeply saddened," Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said after being informed of Ivie's death on Tuesday. "This act of violence reminds us of the risks our men and women confront, and the dangers they willingly undertake, while protecting our nation's borders. We are working closely with our federal, state and local law enforcement partners to track down those responsible for this inexcusable crime, and to bring them to justice."

    Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer issued a statement blasting the federal government for failing to secure the border.

    "Arizonans and Americans will grieve, and they should," Brewer said. "But this ought not only be a day of tears. There should be anger, too. Righteous anger -- at the kind of evil that causes sorrow this deep, and at the federal failure and political stalemate that has left our border unsecured and our Border Patrol in harm's way."

    George McCubbin, president of the National Border Patrol Council, an association of 17,000 agents and staffers, said the wounded agent was recovering and the third was not wounded.

    All three were on horseback when they were attacked.

    Source
     

Share This Page