Contempt Vote Tomorrow

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Last week the Congressional Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted 23 to 17 (down party lines) to hold to hold US Attorney General Eric Holder in Contempt of Congress for attempting to Obstruct thier ivestigation into the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry who was killed by a rifle registered to the US Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (BATFE).

It has since been revealed that BATFE Agents along the Arizona/Mexico Border had been providing weapons to the Signolla Drug Cartel. I posted about the story when initially broke here.

Holder initially denied any knowledge of of the policy, and later defended it as simply the continuation of a Bush-era program called "Operation Wide Reciever". He has since withdrawn those statements. Holder has not yet been formally held in contempt of Congress. The full House still needs to approve the resolution in order for that to happen. But President Obama has elected to support Holder by asserting executive privilege over the documents subpoenaed by the Oversight Committee.

This raises some interesting questions...

Actual lawyers feel free to corrct me, but as I understand it executive privilege allows the president to withhold documents and other materials that would reveal advisory opinions and recommendations by which governmental policies are formulated. By invoking executive privilege Obama and Holder are essentially admitting that "allowing" guns into Mexico was a policy descision.

Cynics have theorized that this was an effort to justify increased Gun-Control and Federal intervention in southern states. Others see it as simply stupidity and negligence. But what the question I find truly fascinating is "Why has the Obama adminisration chosen to make a stand here?"

I've been expecting Holder to get the boot for a couple of years now but it still hasn't happened. Historically Obama has been willing to sever ties with people who's association has become a liability. Holder is becoming a massive target for the Right and seems to rate an indifferent shrug from the left, so why protect him?

I have a few theories which (in order of increasing cynicism) are...

1: Holder and Obama are friends and Obama is genuinely prepared to risk his own reputation to protect him.

2: Obama doesn't think the charges will stick and sees this as an opprotunity to fuck over a Republican-lead investigation.

3: In relation to #3 Obama and Holder have bought into thier own hype and actually believe that nobody cares about violence in Mexico, they just hate black people.

4: The subpoenaed documents include information that could implicate Obama in wrong doing.

5: Holder has dirt on Obama and is blackmailing him.

Anyone else have any ideas?

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad that Republicans have finally agreed that giving guns to bad people is a bad thing. I await with bated breath their dropping Oliver North like a hot potato.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Politicians lack principals and water is wet.

Are you saying thet congress should simply allow him to walk? would you be making the same argument if Holder was a Republican?

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I am still waiting for them to revoke Dick Cheney's hunting license.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Americans mostly don't care about violence in Mexico. Unless it spills over.

A-G's mostly seem to be rotten bastards, regardless of gender or party affiliation. Why, I don't know.

I can see however, why the Obama administration would want to thwart a Republican investigation by using Executive Privilege just like pretty much every President before him did in similar situations.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

This series on MS-13 shows how committed the US is to promoting latino violence.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

I think AGs aren't born rotten bastards, becoming one does seem to be part of the job.

I can certainly see the administration wanting to thwart a Republican investigation... or even using the investigation, which not too many people care about, to distract from other issues.

I'm not seeing why he'd want the only instance where he used Executive Privilege to be to stop an investigation into how the BATF sold some weapons to Mexican drug dealers which were then used to kill a few DEA agents. I assume this wasn't really an effort to arm drug lords but rather a really big whoops... the kind that people would probably forgive if the AG just admitted that an undercover investigation screwed up.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Actual lawyers feel free to corrct me, but as I understand it executive privilege allows the president to withhold documents and other materials that would reveal advisory opinions and recommendations by which governmental policies are formulated. By invoking executive privilege Obama and Holder are essentially admitting that "allowing" guns into Mexico was a policy descision.

No, they're admitting that the documents requested would've revealed advisory opinions and recommendations. Not about whether F&F was policy, but about the policy decisions relating to F&F once it was revealed. AG Holder's exact words (http://www.docstoc.com/docs/123092707/AG-letter#): "They [the subpoenaed documents] were not generated in 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 their operation."

My bet, btw, is on #2. No court in the world wants to stick its nose in here, and Obama is banking on that. Most transparent president my ass.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

how about that it's a continuation of a Bush Administration Policy?

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

If Obama's CDC decides to not treat blacks with syphilis, who is in the wrong? Continuation of past policy!!!

bTW, that Bush era program was canned as a failure by Bush officials.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Holder has withdrawn that argument from his defense.

...and even if he hadn't at least Operation Wide Reciever was done in cooperation with Mexican authorities, included GPS tracking devices on the guns, and actually resulted in arrests.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Eh, it's Whitewater, Vince Foster and Paula Jones all over again. Republicans WANT TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF IT!

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Except here we have a Justice Department that hands guns directly to criminals. Might as well say "Eh, it's Iran-Contra all over again."

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

If the U.S is handing guns to drug cartels then it gives me just one more reason to be against this whole War on Drugs.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Agreed

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

I find the outcry "HUNDREDS OF DEAD MEXICANS WHY DOESN'T OBAMA CARE" to be a bit disingenuous; I don't think they'd care one whit about it if it were a Republican president.

That being said, I do think the sting operation at the heart of the affair (not neccesarily the programs themselves) was terribly botched, and yes, LIVES were lost, and of COURSE someone should be held accountable for that. Should it be Holder? I dunno. This whole nonsense is (as usual) another example of trying to turn a botched local operation into political hay and ammunition against political rivals. We've seen it used against Republican and Democratic administrations. You can lay the lion's share of blame for the Iraq occupation's blundering on Rumsfeld (and fucking BREMMER) but everyone and their grandmother wanted to lay that on the feet of Bush. And yea, "the buck stops here", and "a captain is responsible for his crew", and all that. But still, unless Holder personally oversaw the operation of the sting, I can't see how its ineptitude is his fault.

Yea, SOMEONE should be held criminally liable for Terry's death. We're talking some serious neglegance here. But the rest of this is like Clinton and the whole perjury thing. Was he "guilty of perjury?" Sure. Should we have even been wasting time putting him up on the stand during such an idiotic witchhunt in the first place? No.

Which means that yea, maybe Holder will be held in contempt. But should this even have gone beyond a local level (and possibly a public gutting of the local office?) Maybe? Maybe not?

(The answer may, of course, depend on your agreement that the operation was "botched", and not some super-sekrit conspiracy to do an end-run around the Second Amendment because somehow drug violence in Mexico makes people in the U.S. not like guns....? Or something. I dunno. I think the whole thing is just Hanlon's razor at work.)

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Oh we already know how much the GOP cares about this issue. See the degree to which they cling to Gordon Liddy and Oliver North, two people a respectable party with political sense wouldn't touch with an 800 and a half foot pole. The problem with this is that when the concept begins under Bush but blows up under Obama, the problem is that the concept was flawed from the get-go. If Holder is held accountable, so should Bush's last attorney general and the Bush Administration morons that came up with this idea to start with also be strung up by their Buster Browns, unless a government operation going bad in a lethal way is somehow worse under a Democrat than a Republican.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

What's this contempt procedure? Why do you guys have it all so complicated? Just hang the guy or something!

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Were waiting for the mexicans to shoot him with his own weapons. Seen some people wishing for that anyway...

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Calling me a partisan hack Democrat is rather hilarious. To me this is all like the "But Bush/Obama didn't declare war, illegal, unconstitutional, sure to summon the Elder Gods from the depths of the sea to eat our souls" comments made whenever the other party occupies the executive branch. To apply this principle fully, every military operation since Korea would be called into effect in a giant trial culminating in the largest mass execution in US history. Hence, it will never fully apply and it's all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

The manufacturer of the weapon made their profit from the weapon and it served its primary function when it killed a human being.

The details are always dirty. Its beyond partisan. Its beyond countries. Its beyond species. Who ultimately "authorizes" us to fire our weapons?

Why do we presume other lives are ours to ruin for profit?

Wait until selling weapons to radical muslims blows back on us....oh wait.

But with F&F, I think anything less that full transparency is criminal. Oh, and Free Bradley Manning! Consistent enough for ya?

[kayjayuu.livejournal.com]

Good thing Oliver North didn't sell to criminals to try to prove that US Private Gun Selling Is Bad(tm). Because that could be an equivalent.

[foreverbeach.livejournal.com]

I thought he was tried and convicted. (Initially)

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to figure this stuff out, and frankly I don't know whats going on in Eric Holder's head. Right now, the contempt vote is based on the fact Holder refuses to hand over subpoenaed documents. In fact, I remember something very similar to this during the Bush administration. House Dems voted Miers and Bolton in contempt last year after Bush declared executive privilege. They don't seem to mind contempt of congress nowadays though. I wonder why? Maybe we all should focus less on something that happened 25 years ago, and more on something that happened 4 years ago when we scream hypocrites! Personally, I think its just common politics, which hypocrisy is pretty much part of the job description.

Anyways, on a more important note, I don't think Obama's executive privilege claim will not hold up in court if it is challenged, as there have been previous court rulings that state that executive privilege cannot be claimed in order to cover up wrong doing.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yes, and guess which party generally has been the one to make the claims? The ones challenging this now and almost guaranteed to use it at least once an administration to cover up a scandal inexcusably stupid in itself.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Anyone else have any ideas?
I still say it's a CIA-front operation under the auspices of the DoJ and all of this is a lot of fluff and mirrors for the political sake of it and the GOP knows nothing is going to happen but they're going to go through the motions for the grist for the mill.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

You forgot:

6. Obama is defending his people, regardless of wrongdoing.

All Presidents back up their staffers. It looks a lot worse to everyone in their party when they don't, and throwing them under the bus could be a lot worse for his reputation than defending him. Nobody wants to work for someone who is willing to discard them so easily. By not invoking executive privilege, Obama would actually be taking a pretty sharp detour from history.

Whether or not it's right is up for debate, but at least it's consistent.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

I don't blame Obama for invoking executive privilege. I actually would have expected him to. It might turn out that he was just trying back up his staff, or it might turn out that he is also covering his own ass (in my view a less likely scenario). However, I don't think it will stand up in court if it comes to that.

[rowsdowerisms.livejournal.com]

I don't get the whole hub bub by Republicans. Don't those on the right want the ATF to have no role in arms purchases in the US?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

It's Paula Jones and Ken Starr all over again.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

1. They may be friends, but good enough friends to risk his reputation right now? I doubt it. Maybe on November 7th though.

2. The charges won't stick. While this is an extremely important story, the volume will keep getting lower - ask anybody in 2 or 3 years how it turned out and they'll have to go google the answer.

3. Most people don't, and Congress understands that. They probably spent more time and money on Roger Clemens than they will on this case (I really hope I'm wrong on that).

4 and 5. I think BO's too good of a politician for either of those.

I'm leaning 2...

[nevermind6794.livejournal.com]

Maybe I've missed some details on this, but doesn't it seem most likely that someone further down the ladder at DOJ signed off on this and that Holder stopped the program once he found out about it?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Is there a good reason why he wouldn't just say that then?