Obama’s Privilege, the fallout

Earlier this week. President Obama claimed Executive Privilege with regards to handing over the Fast and Furious documents demanded by Congress. Before this claim, Attorney General Eric Holder was facing a contempt of congress charge. The question is, Why did Obama make this claim of Privilege now?

This is rather important. Since Obama has made this claim of Executive Privilege, he has now inserted himself into the whole F&F debacle. Prior to this, he had been saying he had no information about this operation. With this new claim, Obama is basically saying that he does know about it.

A number of people, among them skilled attorneys, have also been questioning the actual claim of Executive Privilege, whether it will stand up in court and more importantly, why now?

Powerline Blog’s John Hindraker, who is a lawyer, had a lot to say about this:

Today Deputy Attorney General James Cole advised Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, that the Department of Justice will not respond to the committee’s subpoena of certain documents relating to the Fast and Furious scandal. Instead, the Obama administration is asserting a claim of executive privilege for the reasons laid out in Eric Holder’s letter to President Obama dated June 19.

This caught everyone by surprise, especially the Mainly Stupid Media that has been covering up Der Fubar’s failures.

Holder’s letter is a remarkable document. Viewed from a strictly technical standpoint, it is a terrible piece of legal work. Its arguments are weak at best; in some cases, they are so frivolous as to invite the imposition of sanctions if they were asserted in court. I will explain why momentarily, but first this observation: if an opposing party requests documents that plainly are protected by a privilege, a lawyer will routinely assert the privilege, on principle, even though there is nothing hurtful to his case in those documents. On the other hand, a lawyer will not assert a lousy claim of privilege unless he badly wants to keep the documents in question out of the opponent’s hands because of their damaging nature. If I am correct that the administration’s assertion of executive privilege is baseless, it is reasonable to infer that the documents, if made public, would be highly damaging to President Obama, Attorney General Holder, or other senior administration officials. …

[T]he case that is most directly pertinent to Holder’s assertion of executive privilege isIn re Sealed Case (Espy), 121 F.3d 729 (D.C. Circuit 1997), which, along with Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice, 365 F.3d 1108 (D.C. Cir. 2008), cites and relies upon Espy, contains the most up to date judicial exposition of the doctrine of executive privilege. Unbelievably, Holder’s letter never cites or mentions the Espy case. If a first-year associate wrote a memorandum for me in which he failed even to mention the most significant case, I would fire him….

But Holder’s letter completely fails to acknowledge what a weak reed the “deliberative process privilege” is in the circumstances of this case. In Espy, the court said:

The deliberative process privilege does not shield documents that simply state or explain a decision the government has already made or protect material that is purely factual….

The deliberative process privilege is a qualified privilege and can be overcome by a sufficient showing of need. … For example, where there is reason to believe the documents sought may shed light on government misconduct, ‘the privilege is routinely denied,’ on the grounds that shielding internal government deliberations in this context does not serve ‘the public’s interest in honest, effective government.’”(Snipped from the Hot Air posting on this subject)

Bill Whittle posted an Afterburner video asking why Obama inserted himself into this and comes to a rather brutal conclusion. Obama and Holder knew from day one about the operation, knew what was going to happen and authorized it so they could use the murder of Mexican citizens to ram through new Gun Control legislation.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFIpoL3jrfo[/youtube]

Pretty strong stuff. It might also explain why Obama and Holder have been stonewalling this for so long. The worst case scenario for the Obama administration would be Obama, Holder, and most of the cabinet including Hillary Clinton, (Who would have to know about this since a foreign country was involved), would be looking at prison, probably for the rest of their lives.

One can only hope.

I found this scorecard at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler. The Democrats have been trying to blame Bush, (as usual) for doing the same thing. This card shows the differences:

Thatisall…for now.

~The Angry Webmaster~

(1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)

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