Attorney General Eric Holder has been the subject of vicious partisan personal attacks on his integrity over the failed "gun walking" operation, "Fast and Furious." The hypocrisy of the double standard by congressional Republicans is obvious.
The chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), has abandoned a legitimate bipartisan critique of the misguided and dangerous Fast and Furious law-enforcement technique -- which allowed illegal guns to be sold to dangerous people and to "walk" across the Mexican border untraced and dangerous. Instead, he is apparently trying to send a resolution to the House floor to hold Holder in contempt of Congress for doing what Republican administrations have done over the years -- resisting encroachments by Congress in document demands that violate the separation of powers and might compromise ongoing criminal investigations. So far the GOP House leadership hasn't agreed.
Let's start with three facts that are not in dispute:
First: Holder and most everyone else agree that the Fast and Furious operation was a tragic mistake. Because of sloppy, perhaps criminally negligent supervision by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), guns "walked" across the border in the hands of illegal "straw" purchasers were lost, untracked and left in the hands of murderous thugs, with many found at various crime scenes in Mexico. Two of those guns allegedly purchased by illegal "straws" apparently without interdiction or even close supervision by ATF agents were found where U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was shot to death south of Tucson, Ariz., in December 2010.
Second: Attorney General Holder, as soon as he learned about apparent violations of Justice Department and law enforcement rules and policies by the ATF, ordered an inspector general investigation. That investigation is independent, ongoing and could result in the prosecution of officials who violated the law. Moreover, the AG has clearly repudiated this ill-founded and badly supervised "gun walking" program.
Third, the use -- and misuse -- of the "gun walking" technique didn't begin with Holder. The first two instances occurred in the latter years of the Bush Justice Department: in 2006, with an operation called "Operation Wide Receiver" and in 2007, with then-Republican Attorney General Michael Mukasey being informed about "gun-walking" in a November 2007 memo during a trip to Mexico -- said to be the first time an attorney general was informed of the technique. Yet Issa refuses to call Mukasey as a witness to discuss this issue, while attacking Holder.
So the double standard seems hard to deny. But both parties over the years have exhibited this type of political hypocrisy. We know that conservative Republicans say they believe in strict construction of the Constitution, particularly the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches that is a core premise of the Framers.
So when Democrats in Congress sought to subpoena memos and documents between the White House and the Bush Justice Department over the alleged political firings of U.S. attorneys, the Bush White House resisted on the grounds of separation of powers, and Republicans in Congress defended that resistance. And what did Democrats do? The Democratic House voted to hold two top administration officials in "contempt" of Congress -- which could lead to criminal convictions and imprisonment for following White House instructions on honoring that important constitutional principle.
Yet during the Clinton administration, the Republican-controlled House Oversight panel voted Attorney General Janet Reno in contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena related to campaign finance law violations. This time it was the Democratic White House insisting on upholding the principle of separation of powers and protecting confidential deliberative documents created by senior Justice Department officials advising the president -- and Republicans who insisted on ignoring that principle.
And where are the conservative Republicans in the House protesting this blatant disregard for the constitutional principle of separation of powers and danger to ongoing criminal investigations? And where are the Democrats admitting that they did the same thing to President George W. Bush's Justice Department?
I think most of the American people are sick of this hyper-partisanship and hypocritical double standard in Washington. They see the effort to scapegoat Mr. Holder as the latest example of the out-of-control politics of personal destruction.
And I think they are saying -- left, right and center, liberal, independent, conservative -- to both parties:
Enough.
Cross-posted from The Hill.
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Mr. Davis, a Washington, D.C., attorney specializing in legal crisis management, served as Special Counsel to President Bill Clinton in 1996-98 and served as a member of President Bush's Privacy and Civil Liberties Board in 2006-07. He currently serves as Special Counsel to Dilworth Paxson. He is the author of the forthcoming book, "Crisis Tales - Five Rules for Handling Scandal in Business, Politics and Life," to be published by Simon & Schuster.
Follow Lanny Davis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@lannydavis
On May 3rd Rep. Darrell Issa, (CA) sent every member of his committee a 64-page draft contempt order against AG Holder, along with a 17-page memo outlining the history of the scandal.
Fast and Furious is redolent with memories of the Watergate coverup.
On March 23, 2011, in a Univison interview, Obama said, "First of all, I did not authorize it" and when further pressed said, "Eric Holder did not authorize it. He's been very clear that our policy is to catch gunrunners and put them in jail."
Many people in ATF saw what was happening and tried to warn the bureau, but the corrupt culture of management had become too intimidating. Field agents who spoke up were punished for having an opinion and daring to voice it. Whistleblowers had their reputation, careers, and finances shattered.
This culture of corruption is the Obama administration and as more examples become known it has been in full panic mode to suppress the truth. No matter what the outcome of the testimony of two of its top appointees, the only way to save America is to vote out President Obama in November.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has feigned ignorance when questioned about Fast and Furious. She claims she only found out about the program after Brian Terry was murdered.
She visited the White House with Eric Holder to visit President Obama just a day before Holder testified on Capitol Hill about Fast and Furious, leaving the reason for her visit blank.
These are the facts: There are still 1,400 Fast and Furious guns missing and ATF agents are not actively trying to track them down. Ten thousand round of ammunition were sold to cartel-linked straw buyers under the watch of the ATF. Eight hundred of the original 2,500 weapons sold through Fast and Furious have already been linked to criminal activity."
The program, observers believer, was the deliberate effort to blame the violence in Mexico and in some cases in America on the gun shops, but those shops were intimidated into participating in Fast and Furious out of fear that ATF would take away their licenses.
Bush did it so Obama can do it?
Really that's your logic?
Fast& Furious: Done dispite the lessons learned in Wide Receiver. Unlimited scope. Done as a BATFE only operation which the FBI, DEA, CBP, DHS, State Dept and Mexican Govt were unaware of. Tracking methods were not employed. Stopped only after whistleblowers went public about it, by which time thousands of firearms had gone missing.
Wide Receiver was done correctly and failed. And yet, despite that, the BATFE completely ignored what happened in Wide Receiver and tried it again, this time incorrectly.
Failures happen. Even when we do things correctly, failures happen. We are supposed to learn from our failures and not make the same mistakes again, and yet, the BATFE and DoJ not only repeated the mistake of gun walking, but they removed all the safeguards.
The BATFE and DoJ failed to learn from Wide Receiver and that makes Fast & Furious that much worse.
First, to call "Fast & Furious" a botched operation makes the assumption it was truly intended to bring Cartel leaders to justice. That is, in itself, in contention. There is a strong groundswell of belief (bolstered by some of the continuing relevations) that the true purpose of F&F was to help push a gun-control agenda.
Second, while Holder has indeed appointed an IG tasked with investigating, this investigation has been onging for more than a year with no published results. In point of fact, tens of thousands of documents per the Justice Department have been provided to the IG with a relative few being provided to the Oversight Committee. Why such a discrepancy?
Third, there was a significant difference between the Holder era "gunwalking" tactics and those employed earlier. In earlier operations the Mexican government was kept informed and advised of all guns being allowed to "walk". With Holder's era program, the Mexican government (and incredibly even U.S. agents in Mexico!) were NEVER informed that guns were being walked. Which of course raises the question (see my first point above), how were these weapons going to be traced to the cartels??? Any thinking person would be able to deduce that they would only be found (by tracing) AFTER their use in a crime. Sounds incredible, doesn't it?
1.) Was the Bush progrm coordinated with and authorized by the Mexican Government? Was the Obama program?
2.) Was the Bush program shut down as soon as the first gun disappeared? Was the Obama program?
3.) Could the Bush program be considered an Act of War against Mexico? Could the Obama program?
4.) How many dead Mexicans resulted from the Bush program? How many from the Obama program?
5.) How many dead US federal agents resulted from the Bush program? How many from the Obama program?
6.) Was the Bush program used to further domestic gun control in the United States? Was the Obama program?
Sorry Jerry, I guess they could be similar in a sick liberal kind of way.