House Committee Votes to Hold Eric Holder in Contempt of Congress

Having promised that his administration would be the “most open and transparent in history,”  Barack Hussein Obama invoked executive privilege today to lock up documents that House investigators were seeking in relation to the cover-up surrounding Operation Fast & Furious.
 
In response, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted to hold Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, noting that he has consistently refused to release thousands upon thousands of subpoenaed documents.
 
Executive privilege has been used by Presidents in the past (all the way back to George Washington) as a mechanism to protect sensitive documents relating to things like the military, foreign powers, or the President’s power to pardon.
 
But today’s invoking of executive privilege was not aimed at protecting the country.  Rather, it appears to be nothing more than a crass attempt to cover-up lies and misstatements made by Eric Holder and others in his department.  Consider some of the following:

The Justice Department — in a letter dated February 4, 2011 — told Congress that the U.S. does not knowingly help smuggle guns into Mexico.  The Justice Department had to retract that letter ten months later.

On May 5, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder testified before Congress that he only learned about Fast & Furious “a few weeks ago.”  Later, he had to confess that it would have been more accurate to say “a couple of months” ago — and even that statement was dubious considering that he had received memos on Fast & Furious as far back as July, 2010.

On June 12, 2012, Attorney General Holder defiantly told Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) that the Bush administration knew that guns were being smuggled into Mexico as part of a program called Operation Wide Receiver.  The insinuation was that the Obama administration simply inherited a “gun walking” program that was out of control.  Today, however, Holder had to retract his earlier statement that Bush officials knew about “gun walking.”

Finally, there are the leaked affidavits.  As reported by John Lott today, a mole in the Justice Department gave Rep. Darrell Issa’s Oversight and Government Reform Committee a set of wiretap applications “proving that high department officials knew about the administration’s efforts to aid the gun smuggling.”  As noted by Lott, this destroyed much of Holder’s credibility since he had claimed these wiretap applications were not relevant to Fast & Furious and justified his refusal to release them.
 
Technically speaking, executive privilege is supposed to be employed to protect deliberations where the President was personally involved.  Hence, the invoking of the privilege seems to suggest that the President (or his top deputies) have known more about Fast & Furious than has heretofore been admitted by any Justice Department official.
 
It’s interesting that Eric Holder wanted to get immunity from Issa’s committee before he would give any more paperwork to them.  Having failed to get the desired immunity, Holder asked President Obama to lock up the requested documents.
 
One significant Senator blasted the use of executive privilege: “There’s been a tendency on the part of this administration to try to hide behind executive privilege every time there’s something a little shaky taking place.  The administration would be best served by coming clean on this.”
 
Ironically, that quote does not come from any Republican in the Senate, but rather from then-Sen. Barack Hussein Obama during a CNN interview on March 19, 2007.
 
Obama has raised the stakes as his actions today point to his involvement in either planning or covering up the fallout related to Operation Fast & Furious.
 
Those who are close to this investigation, including this writer,  have concluded that Operation Fast & Furious was nothing more than attempt to bring new and stronger gun control laws which would only render Americans less safe.
 
The Operation blew up in their faces after hundreds of people were killed by Fast & Furious guns — and in particular, a Border Patrol named Brian Terry in December, 2010.

The Obamanation engaged in constant cover up, with the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security, perjuring themselves before Congress on more than one occasion.  The main stream media conspired with Obama to make this story disappear.  Patriots using blogs and social media have demanded accountability to insure that our elected Representatives could not sweep this serious misconduct under the rug.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.” - President Ronald Reagan

Gun bans don’t disarm criminals, gun bans attract them. – Vice President Walter Mondale, DEMOCRAT