VAN SUSTEREN: All right, so did you get the documents tonight from the attorney general of the United States that you had subpoenaed?
ISSA: Sadly, no. We not only didn’t get the documents, but the only offer we got was an offer that if we would take a briefing followed by such documents as they think support the briefing and agree to end the case, we could go our separate ways.
The attorney general did not come with any offer of any documents except as a contingent for ending the case outright, and he didn’t bring any list of any documents, or for that matter, anything in writing . . .
VAN SUSTEREN: I suppose he could have made a phone call to you making that same offer, rather than sort of this journey that we’ve been through for the last 24 hours, waiting to see what would happen.
ISSA: Well, sadly, what happened in this meeting was exactly what happened in our exchange of letters. We said we need the documents and we’d evaluate them. We limited the scope, extremely limited. And he kept saying that he wanted to have a meeting, so he’s had the meeting.
We didn’t close the door. I let him know that if he would produce meaningful documents, meaningful relative to the subpoena and the speaker’s request before tomorrow’s start-up, we would certainly postpone and evaluate those documents. But I’m not optimistic at this point . . .
VAN SUSTEREN: Did — does this mean — it is assuming that there are no documents that come from the Department of Justice, the attorney general, between now and tomorrow about 10:00 AM, does this mean that you intend to go full speed ahead and seek to hold him in contempt, or at least vote it out of the committee?
ISSA: Well, Greta, we have no choice but to — for a refusal to deliver documents that are relative to a lawful subpoena, we have no doubt but to — or no choice but to hold him in contempt. It’s not our choice. We want the documents. Brian Terry’s family would like the documents that are responsive to how, in fact, their son was gunned down with weapons that came from lawful dealers but at the bequest of — behest of the Justice Department . . .
VAN SUSTEREN: What is the — I mean, let’s assume — let’s jump ahead. Let’s assume tomorrow there’s a vote out of your committee for contempt and let’s assume that there’s a vote from the House of Representatives for contempt. What’s the practical effect? What — what do you — what do you get in the end? Is there — you don’t get your documents, but what do you get?
ISSA: Well, sadly, the attorney general said in the meeting that if we go forward with contempt, we’d get no cooperation from that time forward. On the other hand, he said if we would take the briefing, we’d have to close the case. So we’re sort of between a rock and a hard spot. We really have to go forward.
Yes, contempt is unusual, and the U.S. attorney pleading the case before a federal judge in D.C. can take some time. And unfortunately, during that time, we don’t expect to get a lot of new discovery. But again, you really have no choice when the executive branch says, No, we won’t allow you to look into misconduct within the executive branch.
No surprise here. Contemptible, appropriate and precisely descriptive. Holder is entirely familiar and comfortable with what he does. Any form or hint of intelligence is reduced to idiocy when involved and committed to the vicious. Meaning even we too are reduced by his idiotic blather.
It’s all an elaborate play, with both Democrats and Republicans as the puppet masters, with us sheeple sitting mesmerized in the audience. Those of us who are not comatose and speak up will be taken out and beaten.
I hope this shakes up our government, they need a good whack on the nose with a rolled up Constitution for the stains they are leaving on our United State. It’s called checks and balances for a reason. It’s obvious that the Executive has asserted too much power while the Legislative was too busy counting their payoffs.
At least gas prices are lower
yeah – I noticed that, too. Curious how they have gone down so quickly. Pay no attention to the bright shiny lure while my AG is held in contempt . . . . .
Here is the funny question – if under Congressional rules the US Atty for DC (Ron Machen – who is a really nice guy BTW, but he did donate to Obama) is required to push for the contempt for the subpoena for a federal judge in DC for his boss (Holder), but his boss (Holder) just appointed him to investigate the recent Nat’l Security leaks and claimed he is unbiased, is it just me or does anyone else see the problem here? Are we in a constitutional quagmire that will drag out past the 2012 elections???
Do you really think the price of gas has anything to do with this? I mean really, you think the speculative price of Crude is so dependent on the executive branch that they could lower the price per barrel and lower the price at the pump in enough time to coincide with this mess? Not to mention that the government would have to tell gas companies as a whole to drop their price nationwide over a hearing that has nothing to do with them.
The price of gas is dependent on domestic and foreign consumption, domestic and foreign production, domestic and foreign demand, politics in the middle east, and new drilling technology. The price is down because of a boom in production, in the States, a reduction in consumption domestically, drastically reduced buying power in the Eurozone, Asian Off-shore wells are delivering more product, and our relationship with Iran, Saudi and Venezuela is not in turmoil.
Forget the crap about the XLT Pipeline, it only effects the speculative price of crude, and will only serve to deliver more oil to China and not the US. It’s Canadian oil going through a Canadian pipeline over US soil to Texas refiners. Those refinery’s will refine the majority of it for China and Asia whose EPA standards are lower so the price to refine is cheaper and the Asian market price is greater.
Forget the Republican Campaign promises about $2.50 a gallon. Bush Jr. owned several Oil Companies and his ties to Haliburton are no secret, and the price of gas during his time as president went through the roof despite everything he did to loosen regulation, lessen government oversight, hand out US contracts, and increase Gulf drilling. Sure we can open up more of the Gulf to American drillers, but the industry is moving away from shelf drilling into deep water drilling. At the moment the gulf isn’t as big a fight as it was 20 years ago, with fracking and lateral drilling the oil companies are opening up new wells, and re-drilling old fields domestically to capture more oil and recover lost profits.
The only thing Romney, or anyone in the Government can do is loosen EPA regs on refining, (which won’t happen under any president) tap into the reserves, (which we don’t need because the production of domestic oil is up) build the XLT pipeline,(which won’t effect domestic prices for a decade) and reduce domestic consumption by mandating higher fuel efficiency, (which Obama Did) subsidizing corn for E85, (Both Bush and Obama Have) and opening up Shelf drilling in the Gulf and On-shore drilling in Alaska.
Anything else they tel you is political B.S. and that is shiny lure to get you to vote, not inditing the AG.
They jumped back up 15 cents today where I live.
I’m expecting that Boehner won’t back Issa up on this. Boehner is a cream-puff where confrontation with this administration is concerned, and he’s more interested in maintaining his invitations to go golfing rather than calling this administration to account.
If Holder takes the fall it’s because he’s shielding Obama, who clearly and obviously had to have known about the many gun running operations conducted by the Executive branch.
That is, Obama’s only defense for not knowing about the operations well before Agent Terry’s death is gross incompetence. At the very least there should be an impeachment hearing.
“ISSA: Well, sadly, the attorney general said in the meeting that if we go forward with contempt, we’d get no cooperation from that time forward.”
For this to be a credible threat, Holder would have had to have been cooperating in the first place. As he has shown no intention of cooperating with the subpoena, I don’t really see the downside here.
Holding my nose while watching government work just isn’t enough anymore. Frankly, I want Holder found in contempt, some whistle blower to leak all the desired documents, so Holder can then be arrested and once trapped like the rat he is, give up damning info on Obama……… hey, I can dream, right?
Does anyone think that by this point Obama is still ignorant about all the facts involving this case? He may claim that he did not know any details during the commission of these crimes by the ATF and Holder, but by this point we can all be assured he knows everything. Holder answers to him doesn’t he? So why doesn’t Obama just instruct Holder to cooperate? Especially in the interest of “transparency”, a word I was so sick of hearing by the end of the last election it still turns my stomach. Such hypocrisy. It is obvious that Holder, at Obama’s instruction, is participating in a coverup of this operation and the administration’s motivations in enacting it, and response to it being uncovered.
Obama’s treatment of the Terry family, whose son died defending this country’s borders, is so absolutely despicable that I want to throw something at the screen every time I see him talking glowingly about the men and women who fight and die for this country every day. It’s just a photo op for him. The only transparency we’ve gotten from his administration is that we can all see through his BS.
According to msn, Obama invoked executive privlage over the subpeoned documents. http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/20/12317893-obama-invokes-executive-privilege-over-doj-documents?lite
And just now I hear the big O just signed an order authorizing Holder to exert executive privilege over the documents. It’s come down to that now. Is there any doubt that they contain damning info about the Pres?
At this point we know the documents detail criminal wrong doing by administration officials and complete disregard for the rule of law. It’s good this is happening right before the election, just like the financial implosion that swept this Amateur into office. Hopefully this will sweep him out.
I agree, but simply losing your job is not sufficient punishment for directing, and then covering up, an operation that resulted in the murder of an agent doing his job to protect this country. A job he was doing at the direction of this administration. Basically the govt told Terry to go defend the border and then armed foreign criminals so they could kill him. Sounds like a domestic terrorist to me.
Sounds like, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Columbia, and every other covert confrontation that the US has been involved in. Quick question, should we hold the Bush administration to the same standards as the Obama administration for Operation Wide Receiver conducted in 2006 that involved letting hundreds of guns walk across the border in Arizona? How many people did Operation Wide Receiver kill that no one is being held accountable for? I am all for holding toes to the fire, but lets not focus on only one set of toes.
Quick question, should we hold the Bush administration to the same standards as the Obama administration for Operation Wide Receiver conducted in 2006 that involved letting hundreds of guns walk across the border in Arizona? How many people did Operation Wide Receiver kill that no one is being held accountable for? I am all for holding toes to the fire, but lets not focus on only one set of toes.
Again, the Bush-era gun running op WAS a botched sting. The Agents involved attempted to follow the weapons. Some of them were equipped with GPS trackers. In this case, Agents were literally called off when they tried to follow the guns and intercept the buyers. BIG DIFFERENCE.
Same type of program, over 400 weapons were donated to the Mexican Cartels, and only a few weapons were tracked. The exact same thing happened under Bush that happened under Obama, same program, same director, same location, same idea. The only changes were more guns and less oversight. Also, you assert that this is a program designed to prop up the Zetas against the Sinnolas to find favor so we can control them, was the Bush administration attempting the same thing with Wide Receiver? How can two different administrations try the exact same strategies with the same results, and yet only one is called to confess their sins?
No question: the ATF is a rogue agency.They were rogue since they started (thank you Mr. Reagan). Waco? I am not attempting to exonerate the ATF, whether it’s under Bush or Obama. However . . .
Wide Receiver was a flop. But on its face WR was a legitimate attempt to catch gun smugglers in cooperation with the Mexican government. No agents were ordered to stand down.
F&F was patently NOT an attempt to catch gun smugglers. So what was it? An attempt to inflate the numbers of guns going to Mexico to justify an expansion of ATF power and create new gun control legislation? Arming the Sinaloas as a quid pro quo for cartels fighting the Zetas? Dunno. Let’s find out shall we?
Oh and what about all the OTHER ATF and federal black bag jobs? Has everyone forgotten Operation Castaway (ATF > Palm Beach gun store guns > Honduras)?
But make no mistake: both ops were bone-headed ATF black bag jobs. But there is a substantive difference in terms of numbers and procedure.
But, steroids in baseball! Somehow we can have a trial (ending in acquittal) on cheating in a children’s game, but covering up the murder of hundreds of foreign nationals (and a couple of federal LEOS) results in, nothing? an appearance on Fox?
Obama just asserted executive privilege on the docs: http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/20/politics/holder-contempt/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Funny picture of Holder framed by the dark wings in the background. Holder looks like he could be a mix of Count Dracula and the Angel of Death.