Contemptible Holder to be held in contempt?

Good day all, well it looks like Eric Holder has finally done it. The House of representatives is looking to hold the Attorney General of the United States in Contempt of Congress for his refusal to cooperate in the “Operation Fast & Furious” debacle.

Fast & Furious was part of the Project Gunrunner started in 2005 to reduce the number of guns being smuggled into Mexico. Operation Fast and Furious was a subset of gunrunner that allowed weapons to actually make it into Mexico. The results have been 2 federal agents and hundreds of Mexican citizens, (And possibly other Americans as well) murdered with these weapons. I won’t rehash all the details about this disaster. I would recommend visiting the Sipsey Street Irregulars for all the details. They have been following this for years.

What has been happening is a flat out coverup by United States Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department with regards to Congressional requests for information and details. The primary committee looking into this mess has been the House Oversight Committee chaired by Representative Darrell Issa. He has been demanding documents and information for almost 2 years with Holder basically refusing to comply, and in a few instances, has appeared to have lied to the Committee. Issa and the committee have had enough.

From CBSNEWS.com:

CBS News has learned the House Oversight Committee will vote next week on whether to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. It’s the fourth time in 30 years that Congress has launched a contempt action against an executive branch member.

This should tell you how rare it is for the executive branch to ignore Congress.

The Justice Department has maintained it has cooperated fully with the congressional investigation, turning over tens of thousands of documents and having Holder testify to Congress on the topic at least eight times.

However, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., says the Justice Department has refused to turn over tens of thousands of pages of documents. Those include materials created after Feb. 4, 2011, when the Justice Department wrote a letter to Congress saying no gunwalking had occurred. The Justice Department later retracted the denial.

I won’t say that Rep. Issa has finally figured out what the rest of us have known for the last few years. Unlike the rest of America, there is a system and a process that Issa and congress have to follow. Even Speaker of the House Boehner has had enough apparently. Here’s a few tidbits from the Washington Times:

The Justice Department is out of excuses,” Mr. Boehner said in a statement Monday morning. “Either the Justice Department turns over the information requested, or Congress will have no choice but to move forward with holding the Attorney General in contempt for obstructing an ongoing investigation.”

As usual, it looks like Big Baby Boehner is going to give Holder one last chance to comply. Still, I think that critical mass has been reached and the congressional leadership has had enough. Holder has been asked and then subpoenaed for the documents and records. He has flat out refused and gone so far as to make witnesses “unavailable” for testimony. He has also denied knowing anything about Fast & Furious, however a fair amount of anecdotal information indicates that he was in it up to his eyeballs.

For a little more background, when this operation was underway, a number of gun dealers saw the straw purchasers come into their shops and, feeling that something just wasn’t right, called the BATFE to check on them. They were told, and in some cases, ordered to sell the guns to the buyers. Since firearms dealers generally don’t trust the BATFE, they made sure to document every single detail. Here is one example from Coston’s Complaint”

Some gun dealers cooperated with much trepidation. Here are some emails voicing their concerns:
In April, 2010 a licensed gun dealer cooperating with ATF was increasingly concerned about selling so many guns. “We just want to make sure we are cooperating with ATF and that we are not viewed as selling to the bad guys,” writes the gun dealer to ATF Phoenix officials, “(W)e were hoping to put together something like a letter of understanding to alleviate concerns of some type of recourse against us down the road for selling these items.”

ATF’s group supervisor on Fast and Furious David Voth assures the gun dealer there’s nothing to worry about. “We (ATF) are continually monitoring these suspects using a variety of investigative techniques which I cannot go into detail.”

Two months later, the same gun dealer grew more agitated.

“I wanted to make sure that none of the firearms that were sold per our conversation with you and various ATF agents could or would ever end up south of the border or in the hands of the bad guys. I guess I am looking for a bit of reassurance that the guns are not getting south or in the wrong hands…I want to help ATF with its investigation but not at the risk of agents (sic) safety because I have some very close friends that are US Border Patrol agents in southern AZ as well as my concern for all the agents (sic) safety that protect our country.” (Italics from Coston’s complaint)

People have died due to this disgrace and it appears that Eric Holder might have had a hand in it. If so, he needs to be removed from office, indicted for conspiracy in the death of a federal agent as well as an accessory before the fact. No attempt was made to track these guns and the local agents in the street were fit to be tied over this mess. They knew what would happen and it did.

One of the problems with holding Holder in contempt will be the Democrats. Even with all the evidence, the Democrat party has reached a level of corruption only seen in third world nations. There is significant doubt that they will sign off on a contempt charge. I don’t know if they are needed, but if they do obstruct Issa, then the Republican Party should make this an issue in the election this year.

I’m not to hopeful about this, considering the past history of “The Party of Stupid.” I can hope.

Thatisall

~The Angry Webmaster~

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