“Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit pursued against the Department of Justice by government watchdog Judicial Watch, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ruled documents being withheld from Congress under President Obama’s claim of executive privilege must be turned over,” townhall.com reports. So, more than two years after Congress held Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for withholding thousands of Fast and Furious documents, we’ll finally see the smoking gun tying the ATF’s anti-gun-running Mexican gun-running operation to the Obama Administration’s covert support of the Sinaloa drug cartel. Support approved and directed at the highest levels, including former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the President of the United States. Oh wait . . .
“This order forces the Obama DOJ, for the first time, to provide a detailed listing of all documents that it has withheld from Congress and the American people for years about the deadly Fast and Furious gun running scandal,” Judicial Watch released in a statement . . .
The documentation DOJ is required to now turn over is a “Vaughn index” of “all requested Fast and Furious materials from a June 2012 Judicial Watch FOIA request.”
A Vaughn index must: (1) identify each document withheld; (2) state the statutory exemption claimed; and (3) explain how disclosure would damage the interests protected by the claimed exemption.” In ordering the DOJ to provide Judicial Watch the Vaughn index, the Court ruled, “In this circuit, when an agency is withholding documents under exemption claims, courts require that the agency provide a Vaughn index so that the FOIA requester – at a distinct informational disadvantage – may test the agency’s claims.”
In other words, we’ll finally see a list of documents the Administration’s hiding from public scrutiny, not the documents themselves. The judge will review the list and the government’s objections to the FOIA request. If he smells BS, the judge can order the government to provide him with specific documents for review. If, after reading the docs, the judge disagrees with the government’s objections, he can order the documents released to Judicial Watch.
So the process of trying to unravel the Fast and Furious coverup continues. Could the scandal bring down the President, as TTAG suggested back in the day? Not likely. But it could torpedo Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations. We’ll take it. The murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry by drug thugs enabled by the ATF et al. deserves nothing less, and a lot more.