The Plot Thickens: Obama Asserts Executive Privilege to Block Fast & Furious Disclosures
Andrew C. McCarthy
PJ Media
6/20/2012
…The issue in F&F is not the withholding of DOJ documents. The issue is the reckless provision of an arsenal fit for an army to violent cartels, quite predictably resulting in the murders of possibly hundreds of people including at least one United States law enforcement officer. That is the reason Congress did not go away, as it usually does, when the Justice Department ignores or slow-walks demands for information. What happened here is too grave to take “no” for an answer.
If this were a Republican administration, the press would long ago have made the Department’s obstruction of Congress a five-alarm scandal. Bush administration Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was forced to resign over a matter that was less than frivolous compared to F&F. The press is in the tank for Obama, so Holder & Co. have relatively smooth sailing — even when it became clear that they provided blatantly false information to Congress about the use of the gun-walking tactic. Chairman Darrell Issa (R., CA) has been heroic in pursuing this investigation at a time when Republicans have been generally feckless in challenging Obama’s abuses of power.
But while Holder has been in the eye of what little storm there was, it has always been the case that F&F is Obama’s scandal. Holder has never done anything other than implement Obama’s policies and manage relations with Congress as Obama wished them to be conducted. Obviously, the hope was that if DOJ was intransigent enough, the House would get frustrated and bored and move on to other things…
…if the Obama administration’s story was true, they would want to release the documents that support it.
They really don’t want you to see what is in those documents.
Read the entire article at PJ Media.
Also at the site, Holder Speaks: Accuses Issa of Distraction, Points Finger at Bush
H/T neo-neocon:
…However, I also think that Obama has a history of arrogance and secrecy. Yes, there may be a bunch of smoking guns he’s covering up, but I think it’s also a personality trait of his to say “it’s none of your business” when asked to divulge information (that’s the “secrecy” part). And he thinks he can get away with it, since he’s done it before many times (that’s the “arrogance” part). What’s more, he may be trying to see how far he can push his power in general, and executive privilege is an important tool in that endeavor.
Related: Jay Carney, unintentional comedian
Carney earlier had said it was “absolutely” untrue that the withholding of the documents was in any way a “coverup.”
…“There’s actually a constitutional clash here,” Napolitano stated, saying that the Supreme Court resolved it once before in a very famous case called the United States vs. Nixon in which the then-president’s documents were subpoenaed and he refused to comply…
Update: Nancy Pelosi: “This Holder contempt vote is about voter suppression”
