Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Well Now We Know For Sure

59 Comments

The White House has implicitly admitted that it knew about Fast&Furious. So what did the president know, and when did he know it?

Between this, and the enemies list, with the IRS going after conservative donors, I feel like I’ve been transported back to the Nixon administration. Except no one died in Watergate.

Anyway, now that executive privilege has been invoked, it’s going to be pretty hard for the media to ignore the story, as they have been for months.

[Update a few minutes later]

More from Andy McCarthy.

[Update a couple minutes later]

…and from (former DOJ prosecutor) Christian Adams as well.

[Update a few minutes later]

And here’s the Twitter feed.

59 thoughts on “Well Now We Know For Sure”

  1. Thank you for this, especially the mention of deaths vs. watergate.

    I’ve argued this many times with liberal friends, who invariably throw up their hands in horror that anyone would compare fast & furious to watergate. I just nod, and say, “What was the death toll with watergate?” I get blinks, and blank looks. I’ve been using that line for over a year.

    Whatever they are hiding, it must be freaking huge. There’s no other plausible reason why Obama, who is already suffering at the polls in part due to his frequent high-handedness, would invoke executive privilege otherwise. He would not take this kind of damage to protect Holder.

    The issue seems to be the discussions related to the decision to “withdraw” the letter of the assistant AG.

    One thing that fits all the facts is if this was done at the direction of the white house. There’s a term for that: Obstruction of Justice. That’s what brought down Nixon.

    The good news is that much of the media was ignoring Fast & Furious, but now it’s story #1.

    This is going to hurt Obama a lot, even if he skates on obstruction of justice. He’ll now have a watergate-level scandal exploding around him as he goes into the fall election, which already wasn’t looking good for him.

    I hope the Republicans ask often; how many people did Watergate kill? And then point out that the F&F death toll is in the hundreds, and people are STILL dying from it.

    1. I think it’s likely that F&F is what Obama was referring to when he told Sarah Brady that he was “doing something under the radar” on gun control. And the documents show that he knew all about it.

    2. I’ve been using that line for over a year.

      You must be very proud of yourself. Meanwhile, Nixon’s people planned to assassinate Jack Anderson and firebomb of the Brookings Institute. If it’s literal blood you’re after, recall that part of the motivation for Watergate was to cover up Nixon’s 1968 back-door negotiations with South Vietnam, which prolonged the war and lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of American soldiers.

      The right is convinced that government, by its very nature, screws up all the time. But in this case, the fact that there was a screw up is considered prima facie evidence of a criminal conspiracy. It’s a testbook example of wishful thinking.

      Whatever they are hiding, it must be freaking huge.

      Because…

      He would not take this kind of damage to protect Holder.

      What damage? And what choice does he have? Issa will keep subpoenaing documents until he finds a crime, or at least a juicy scanddal, whether or not any exists. It was inevitable that Holder and Obama would eventually say no, regardless of whether there’s anything to hide.

      Remember when Bush asserted executive privilege to keep private the contents of Cheney’s meetings with energy execs? Should we conclude that they must have been hiding something “freaking huge”?

      He’ll now have a watergate-level scandal exploding around him

      Yes, if they can find tapes and testimony that implicate dozens of his people in crimes (Nixon saw 43 aides charged). Again, dream on.

      1. Jim, Fast & Furious did get hundreds of people killed. Congress has a very strong suspicion that the death toll was planned, and in fact that’s the only reason the operation would make any sense at all, since the ATF had no way to track the guns, as they admitted to Congress already.

        Rand’s comment about Brady refers to the distinct likelyhood that Obama himself approved the policy of supplying guns to the most violent people that US law enforcement has to deal with, in order to create such an increase in the violent murder rate of US citizens that he could justify new gun control measures. And in fact, even in the wake of the Fast & Furious scandal, the ATF went ahead and demanded that gun stores on border states track multiple sales because some gun dealers had been selling to drug cartel straw buyers, as if one side of the agency had no idea that their scheme had been exposed and that everyone knew that the named gun dealers in question had already proven that they were required to sell to the cartels by the ATF itself, over their own strong objections.

        So to you and those also drinking the administration Kool-Aid on this issue, I ask why you think the DOJ wouldn’t have already turned over ALL documentation related to this case, since they claim it was just a botched operation. If it were just an oopsie by low-level agents and administrators, even by Holder himself, then there wouldn’t be anything to hide. Obviously that’s not the case.

        If it’s literal blood you’re after, recall that part of the motivation for Watergate was to cover up Nixon’s 1968 back-door negotiations with South Vietnam, which prolonged the war and lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of American soldiers.

        How could Nixon sabotage peace talks that were a complete sham from the get go? Is there anyone on this entire planet who thinks Hanoi was willing to stop the war in 1968 and abandon their plans for the conquest of South Vietnam? That whole year was a series of North Vietnamese offensives aimed at strengthening their negotiating position, and their negotiating positions during the entire war were aimed at establishing the most favorable balance of forces and terrain so they could launch further strategic offensives. They were willing to throw away an entire generation of North Vietnamese men to achieve their end. You might as well attack someone for undermining Neville Chamberlain’s peace talks with Hitler, as if a piece of paper would’ve stopped him.

        The real tragedy of Nixon and Watergate regarding Vietnam is that we withdrew two years before the South Vietnamese military was ready to stand on its own, that our weakened Presidency couldn’t stop Ted Kennedy from putting an arms embargo on South Vietnam, and that Ford didn’t have the stomach to enforce our treaty obligations and use air power to stop the final invasion in 1975. As a result millions of South Vietnamese died, millions more became refugees (the US has two-million Vietnamese Americans), and all of Vietnam has suffered under absolute totalitarian communist dictatorship for over thirty five years.

        1. Fast & Furious did get hundreds of people killed.

          You really think those people would be alive today, if not for F&F? Thousands of guns cross the border every year!

          Congress has a very strong suspicion that the death toll was planned

          Because they want a scandal, not because there’s any logic or evidence to that effect.

          I ask why you think the DOJ wouldn’t have already turned over ALL documentation related to this case

          No administration is ever going to let a hostile committee of the opposing party look at anything and everything they ask for. Issa is now asking for documents from the period after F&F was shut down — he’s fishing.

          Obviously that’s not the case.

          No, it isn’t obvious. Do you think every president who asserts executive privilege is hiding something? You are indulging in wishful thinking.

          How could Nixon sabotage peace talks that were a complete sham from the get go?

          Sham or not, they were negotiations being conducted by the US government. Nixon violated the Logan Act by secretly urging the South Vietnamese to boycott the peace talks, and promising more military support than Johnson or Humphrey would give, in exchange for denying the Democrats a peace deal before the election. Part of Watergate was an effort to find and bury the evidence (Nixon mistakenly thought that some of it was at Brookings, and repeatedly told subordinates to break in).

          1. “Congress has a very strong suspicion that the death toll was planned”

            Because they want a scandal, not because there’s any logic or evidence to that effect.

            No evidence except for the explicit e-mails of the agents in charge of the F&F operation (obtained by CBS News) and statements by Obama and Holder.

            And nobody has ever been prosecuted under the Logan Act for anything, including John Kerry who admits he secretly met with the head of the Viet Cong in Paris to sabotage US diplomatic efforts and get Hanoi to release a POW directly to his protest group, so he could pressure the US to sign a peace treaty without first getting the return of all US POW’s. Most POW’s think would’ve led directly to their execution. It’s kind of hard to take Democrat whining about the Logan Act seriously when they reward egregious violators with party nominations.

            And of course, since no case has ever even been brought forward under the Logan Act, it has never been tested in court. Prohibiting an American citizen from privately speaking his mind on a political topic to anyone he wishes, and not even involving state secrets or an enemy state. Hrm… Good First Amendment case right there.

      2. Did Nixon do a great many reprehensible things? Yes, of course he did. However, the point is, how many people did Watergate kill? Fast & Furious has killed hundreds, and that’s just the ones we know of. (Only when the guns are recovered and linked to a killing do we know if they are F&F guns).

        The gun control argument is laughable. Even the most ardent pro-gun people (of which I am one) don’t favor providing free guns to murderous gangs of criminals. We favor gun ownership by law-abiding citizens. Huge difference. And, let’s flip that around, shall we? I find it bizzare in the extreeme that leftists who oppose the ownership of guns by law abiding citizens thinks it’s just fine to ship free guns by the truckload to criminal gangs.

        Issa has ALREADY found a crime. It’s called perjury. Some of the testimony has been proven false, and that makes it perjury. That’s far from the only crime involved here, but it’s a crime.

        Tapes? Nope, there probably won’t be any tapes. It’ll probably be e-mails. Issa has already demonstrated a means to get some e-mails (via a “leak”, apparently) so we’ll see what happens over the coming weeks.

        I think I need to stock up on popcorn; it’s going to be a very entertaining few months.

        1. Liberals: Every country has the right to have a nuke. No person has the right to own a gun.

        2. Fast & Furious has killed hundreds

          What about Wide Receiver — how many has it killed? Who should go to jail for that?

          Some of the testimony has been proven false, and that makes it perjury.

          So why aren’t there criminal charges? Perjury isn’t just false testimony, it’s testimony that you can prove was known to be false when it was given. Issa hasn’t found that.

          I find it bizzare in the extreeme that leftists who oppose the ownership of guns by law abiding citizens thinks it’s just fine to ship free guns by the truckload to criminal gangs.

          It would be bizarre if there were such people, but there aren’t — no one is defending F&F or Wide Receiver.

          1. Holder admitted to perjuring himself twice so far. He had to “take back” statements he made. The latest was about the Bush administration knowing about F&F.

      3. Jim,
        you have the ‘motivation’ for Watergate from Nixon’s ghost or what? Read Gordon Liddy’s book, look up why he says they broke in, THEN try again.

        Here’s hoping the IF they find out that he knew, Obumble is prosecuted. And failing that, he is personally sued by the families of anyone killed with those guns.

        And let me follow up CJ. I’m for guns, I carry daily and I believe in my rights to own and carry. But the LAST thing I want is more guns in the hands of criminals anywhere. Let alone along our border in the hands of criminals who make a living smuggling into our country.

        I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt as I can’t imagine anyone would really think that pro-gun people would want criminals to have guns. I can only imagine you were trying to be provocative.

        1. But the LAST thing I want is more guns in the hands of criminals anywhere.

          What policies would you favor to keep guns out of the hands of criminals?

      4. Holder perjured himself twice before congress. Both of those were related to who knew what when.

        Jim, you should be happy to know that Holder said the Bush administration had nothing to do with this.

        1. Holder perjured himself twice before congress.

          If Issa could prove perjury, he would. But he can’t, so instead he goes fishing for more documents.

    3. the F&F death toll is in the hundreds, and people are STILL dying from it.

      Are you really arguing that Mexican drug gangs wouldn’t commit murders if it weren’t for guns they got with help from F&F? Whatever happened to “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”?

      This has to be one of the oddest things about the F&F fake scandal phenomenon: die-hard opponents of gun control arguing passionately that lax enforcement of gun laws leads directly to more murders.

      1. “Are you really arguing that Mexican drug gangs wouldn’t commit murders if it weren’t for guns they got with help from F&F?”

        No.
        The claim is that the Mexican drug gangs wouldn’t be committing murders with guns deliberately released by BATFE.

        I kept it simple so you could at least attempt analysis of the distinction.

        1. The claim is that the Mexican drug gangs wouldn’t be committing murders with guns deliberately released by BATFE.

          If the murders were going to happen anyway, you can’t call them “the F&F death toll”, or say “F&F got hundreds of people killed”. It’s obviously a huge screw up to have BATFE-supervised guns be used to kill people, but BATFE didn’t cause those deaths, and different BATFE policies wouldn’t have prevented them.

          1. Jim, give a gun to a known felon (which is illegal), in the expectation that he will kill someone (also illegal), and then after he commits the murders, try and use that argument before a judge to avoid prosecution and a very long prison sentence as accessory to murder. Good luck.

          2. If the murders were going to happen anyway, you can’t call them “the F&F death toll”, or say “F&F got hundreds of people killed”.

            IF.

          3. If the murders were going to happen anyway, you can’t call them “the F&F death toll”, or say “F&F got hundreds of people killed”.

            If this is your view, then here’s a question; do you care about Russia giving Syria attack helicopters? We know that Assad has killed his people without such helicopters. More are likely to die, whether Russia sells these helicopters to Syria or not. So do you think Obama and Clinton are wrong in standing in the way of the Russian/Syrian deal?

      2. It wasn’t lax enforcement of laws, it was ATFE / DOJ deliberately telling gun shop owners to sell to criminals.

        Are you seriously this deluded or are you just in here to troll? I mean you accuse legal gun owners of wanting criminals to have guns. And in the next mouthful, you weasel word around calling out the ones ACTUALLY got them the guns.

  3. You won’t hear silence any more. What you will hear is lots of stories about the number of times Bush invoked executive privilege (6), and perhaps even the number of times Clinton did (14), and how great it is that Obama has only done it once! And Jim will repeat that here in future comments, along with the “nothing more to see here” that the MSM will be pushing.

    And that will be the end of it.

  4. “it’s going to be pretty hard for the media to ignore the story”

    They’ll manage. Just watch ’em. >:-(

  5. I feel like I’ve been transported back to the Nixon administration

    Only in your dreams. Do you really think the Supreme Court is going to order Holder to hand over tapes of him talking to Obama about how they should let some guns go over the border, in hopes of creating mayhem and building support for Obama’s 142nd highest political priority, the tightening of gun control laws?

    I remember when liberals were sure that the Plame affair would lead to Cheney’s impeachment and Karl Rove being “frog marched” out of the West Wing in handcuffs. Wishing doesn’t make it so.

    Anyway, now that executive privilege has been invoked, it’s going to be pretty hard for the media to ignore the story, as they have been for months.

    That’s what the investigation is all about: generating bad press for Obama in an election year. But fights over executive privilege are about the least sexy story imaginable, so don’t expect much ongoing coverage.

    2. It’s funny you bring up Plame because the current administration has been leaking detailed classified information about our active intelligence operations.

      They outed a CIA operative in Pakistan who is now serving 30 years in prison.

      They outed a double agent from another country who can lo longer be a clandestine agent and ruining the potential for taking out AQ leadership cells.

      They threw our ally Israel under the bus with leaks about Stuxnet, Duqu, and Flame. These leaks also make these programs unusable. A decade of work halted so Obama can beat his chest.

      But ya lets keep talking about a DC socialite who wasn’t a clandestine CIA agent.

      1. It’s funny you bring up Plame because the current administration has been leaking detailed classified information about our active intelligence operations.

        Again, there’s a world of difference between a politically-motivated accusation and proof. Obama’s prosecuted leaks more aggressively than recent presidents. He’s also prosecuted drone and cyber warfare more aggressively. This annoys the Republicans, who like to paint Democrats as weak on national security, but are realizing that they can’t make that case stick this year. So instead they whine about leaks.

        1. Obama’s prosecuted leaks more aggressively than recent presidents.

          Only when they’re politically damaging to the administration. When they show it in a good light, they orchestrate them.

  6. Rand, you’re actually wrong on the facts. The claim of privilege is over what Holder told Obama after everybody knew about Fast and Furious. From your link – “They [documents covered by privilege] were not generated in the course of the conduct of Fast and Furious. Instead, they were created after the investigative tactics at issue in that operation had terminated and in the course of the Department’s deliberative process concerning how to respond to congressional and related media inquiries into that operation.”

    There is no smoking gun, and Issa knows it. So now he’s trying to show that, despite Holder’s repeated appearances at his committee, that there’s some kind of coverup.

      1. Refusing to hand you the PIN to my debit card may not be transparency, but I don’t think I’ll be giving it to you.

        Everybody needs the ability to, from time to time, talk to other people about an issue without fear that the conversation will get blasted over the Internet.

        1. Executive privilege does have an actual purpose which is why every president from George Washington on has probably used it. This is about the ABUSE of executive privilege to cover up criminal activities within this administration. E.P. doesn’t exist for this purpose.

          You seem to have a difficult time discerning the difference between a private conversation and planning and executing crime. Losing an election is too good for them.

    2. Chris, that’s exactly it.

      “They [documents covered by privilege] were not generated in the course of the conduct of Fast and Furious. Instead, they were created after the investigative tactics at issue in that operation had terminated and in the course of the Department’s deliberative process concerning how to respond to congressional and related media inquiries into that operation.”

      The documents are about Obama’s involvement in the cover up, also known as obstruction of justice. Holder is being threatened with contempt of Congress, you know.

      1. What cover up? When Holder found out, he stopped the program.

        What crime? You can’t have obstruction of justice without a crime. What law did Holder break?

        1. It takes 140,000 pages of “responsive documents” to “stop the program”?!?

          If that’s even vaguely true, then they all need to be sacked on grounds that they aren’t competent.

        2. What cover up? The only person who has been punished in this whole fiasco is the whistle blower. If there isn’t an active cover up then the people responsible for this would have been fired but Obama can’t fire himself.

      2. Chris, supplying guns to drug cartels is illegal in all sorts of ways.

        Just starting with Arizona law, they commited a class 3 felony before anyone even got shot.

        14. Supplying, selling or giving possession or control of a firearm to another person if the person knows or has reason to know that the other person would use the firearm in the commission of any felony

        But then it ramps up to second degree murder, a class 1 felony

        3. Under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life, the person recklessly engages in conduct that creates a grave risk of death and thereby causes the death of another person.

        They can also be charged with manslaughter, etc.

        At the federal level, they clearly violated the arms export control act, 22 USC 2778, each violation of which carries a $1 million dollar fine and a twenty year jail sentence. At last count, there were about 2,000 violations.

        They also violated 50 U.S.C. 1701, and the Kingpin Act, 21 USC 1901 through 1908, which forbids any federal agency from engaging in any transaction with a drug cartel, which has some teeth in the form of:

        (2) Any officer, director, or agent of any entity who knowingly
        participates in a violation of the provisions of this chapter shall
        be imprisoned for not more than 30 years, fined not more than
        $5,000,000, or both.

        We could go into the numerous violations in committing what is essentially an act of war against Mexico, the violations of all the State Department notification of foreign officials guidelines for criminal investigations, and a host of other laws that F&F egregiously violated. Perjury is just icing on the cake.

        2. We did not provide guns to anybody. US citizens purchased them and illegally resold them to Mexicans. The ATF did not stop the initial retail purchases, in a (failed and misguided) attempt to intercept the follow-on sale. It’s analogous to a cop watching somebody buy a joint, then trying to follow the dealer to his supplier. This is not illegal activity, so, even if Holder personally approved the operation, he has not violated any law.

          More to the point, Holder not only did not approve the operation, he shut it down when he became aware of it. So, Holder has not violated any law.

          1. You are right Chris, that is exactly what happened, and I eagerly await the AG and President to comply with Congress to get that story out, and as soon as possible. As you say, not only were the actions of ATF legal, they were entirely innocent.

            Sure the press and the Wingnut Blogosphere will have a field day with the admissions of incompetence, but this Administration is all about transparency, airing its errors, and then moving on. I am sure you are right and that AG Holder and President Obama will cooperate with Congress on this.

          2. Paul – what part of “failed and misguided” are you having problems with? Yes, it was a screw-up. It appears that the screw-up started and ended with the US Attorney in Arizona. But since Issa doesn’t like that answer, we have this circus.

            George Turner – Dodson was told to sell guns to a (US) straw buyer by his supervisor, not Eric Holder. Again, this is similar in concept to a drug sting.

            The fact that the operation was done incompetently and not fully disclosed to Eric Holder does not make him a criminal.

          3. Ah, so it started and ended with an attorney in Arizona. That’s why Eric Holder and the DOJ have continuously refused to provide all those documents, the ones that would clearly show they had nothing to do with the operation, the ones that would show it was just a few misguided low-level agents and that there’s no need for Congressional hearings, contempt of Congress charges, or the invocation of executive privilege. That’s it.

            Did you just fall off the back of a turnip truck? You just recited their failed cover story. It didn’t fly. It didn’t even fly with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. It was laughed at.

            For it to be a failed sting operation, there would have to be provisions for an eventual sting. They violated numerous laws (many listed above that carry twenty and thirty year jail sentences) in avoiding any possibility of a sting (which would involve coordinating with Meixcan authorities, or trying to arrest somebody, anybody, who received one of the weapons.)

            And then Obama decides that Eric Holder telling him that “it was just some low-level idiots in Arizona” requires the assertion of executive privilege.

          5. I am having absolutely no problems with “failed and misguided”, none whatsoever. I truly don’t believe in the Grand Conspiracy Theories on this one.

            Suppose Darrel Issa is running “this circus.” In the name of transparency, give him his stacks of documents, and let him make a fool of himself for trying to make this a political issue. Congress has a Constitutional mandate of oversight of the Executive; let Mr. Issa do his overseeing.

          6. If it was all just a botched operation then lets see the people who ordered it punished. Holder wont even say who gave the order.

          7. I think the problem here Chris is that hundreds of people were murdered. Even if we assume as Jim bizarrely does, that these people would have died anyway, that’s still hundreds of counts of accessory to murder, including murder of a federal agent.

          8. It’s analogous to a cop watching somebody buy a joint, then trying to follow the dealer to his supplier.

            You got it backwards and missed a key point. In this case, the cop knew the supplier. And then the cop went to the supplier and told them to illegally sale the drugs to the dealer. The intent was to then follow the dealer and find out who the users were, but that never happened. The intent isn’t really important anymore.

            What’s important is why the BATF told the suppliers to break state and federal laws? Who authorized the BATF to violate these laws? Why, when these violations were discovered, did the DoJ fail to prosecute those who broke the law?

            If a cop tells a dealer to go ahead and sell the drugs, the cop is committing a crime. At best, it is entrapment. At worse, it is aiding in the commission of a crime. The cop needs to be investigated and brought to justice. Eric Holder is the top cop, and Issa is investigating and bringing him to justice.

          9. Leland, honing your argument, it’s like the DEA ordering pharmacies to provide large quantitites of oxycontin, vicodin, and heroin to known straw buyers for top inner-city drug kingpins, without any attempt to track the drugs, the supply chains, or the people peddling the drugs. Then when called out, the DEA claims they wanted to gather “useful data” from the massive increase in black death rates from overdoses. As an anticpated side effect, law enforcement officers and random citizens are murdered, but that’s likewise considered useful data.

            And then Democrats claim that there’s not only nothing wrong with the policy, but that those who question it are racist.

            At best, a Tuskegee experiment was conducted under Obama’s watch, and probably under his direction. It was almost certainly conducted under Holder’s direction. The victims were almost entirely Hispanic. It will be a hundred years before we stop discussing Fast and Furious.

        3. Chris, we did knowingly provide guns directly to cartel members. The whistleblower in this case was ordered to give free federally owned guns directly to the cartel, which he did. It is strongly suspected (via some of the documents) that one of those weapons was recovered at the scene of agent Brian Terry’s murder and later made to disappear by other agents of the DOJ.

          Also, the program had no provisions for intercepting or stopping the follow on sale. It didn’t even have a provision for linking any of the guns recovered at murder scenes to any perpetrator. It didn’t even have a provision for figuring out if any of the guns were linked to murders because, in violation of numerous laws, Mexican authorities weren’t informed of the program.

  7. I’m sure Woodward and Bernstein will be on this story like the stink of bad thinking on Jim.

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