” Voting on strictly partisan lines, a House committee recommended Wednesday that Attorney General (AG) Eric Holder be cited for contempt of Congress for failing to turn over documents relating to the botched Fast and Furious (F&F) weapons sting operation,” cnn.com reports. “The committee measure now goes to the full House for consideration, expected next week, of what would be an unprecedented action — Congress holding a sitting attorney general in contempt.” Holder’s reaction to the vote was inevitable, obfuscatory and predictable: “The action that the committee took yesterday was unwarranted, unnecessary and unprecedented,” the AG pronounced. Yes, well, no . . .
By invoking Executive Privilege to deny the Committee the documents they’d subpoenaed, the White House confirmed its direct involvement in the Fast and Furious scandal, wherein the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (AFT) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (amongst others) facilitated the illegal sale of over 2000 firearms to known criminals. And then let them “walk.”
The POTUS’ peeps may have had operational knowledge of the ATF’s “Guns for Goons” program. Or they may have been directly involved in a coverup to hide the fact that U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down by Mexican drug thugs wielding ATF-enabled weapons. Either way, they’re up to their eyeballs in something Fast and Furious related.
No surprise there. The U.S. AG’s office lied to Congress when they claimed that Operation Fast and Furious didn’t “walk” guns across our Southern border (“retracted” later). The U.S. AG lied when he told Congress he’d learned of the ATF’s [ostensibly] anti-gun smuggling gun smuggling op through the media coverage of Agent Terry’s death. And stonewalled the Committee. But good.
Holder and the Obama administration are now, officially, up against the wall. They will have to answer this charge. They will have to provide the requested documents or face a full House vote on Contempt of Congress. That said, Representative Issa is making conciliatory noises towards the AG, knowing that any such vote must be based on the fact that he exhausted any possible solution.
Issa said after the hearing that he believes a settlement to avoid an unprecedented contempt vote in the House is “in the best interest of the Justice Department, Congress and those most directly affected by Operation Fast and Furious.”
Truth be told, there can be no settlement. The documents that Issa’s homies seek would establish the fact that the Obama Administration, possibly the President himself, knew about Operation Fast and Furious before Agent Terry and Agent Zapata were slaughtered by cartel members using ATF-enabled firearms.
They would also reveal the extent of the post-mortem coverup, including the Head of the Department of Homeland Security (who flew down to the Terry murder scene the day after the Fast and Furious connection was revealed). Again, potentially involving the President of the United States.
The Obama Administration’s supporters are in full spin mode. They have two arguments: Issa is on a witch hunt. And second, Bush did it too.
First, Issa IS on a witch hunt. What else would you call a President of the United States who violates federal and international law to pursue a policy that puts U.S. law enforcement officials and hundreds of innocent Mexicans in harm’s way? A President willing to sacrifice innocent life to empower an anti-Second Amendment federal agency run seriously amok. Well, you may have other names, but you know what I mean.
Secondly, I could argue that Bush’s Operation Wide Receiver was a substantively different (if almost equally bone-headed) program, but the plain truth is that two wrongs don’t make a right. And we’re talking here about the White House’s refusal to provide documents to the U.S. Congress when so ordered. Not what’s IN the documents.
That will come later. Those papers will open a can of worms: revealing the full extent of the Obama Administration’s collusion with Mexican drug cartels. It’s a scandal of epic proportions. When it comes to the U.S. “War on Drugs”—the corruption, misery and loss of liberty it has engendered—here’s hoping the truth about Operation Fast and Furious will set us free.