Will RINOS Kill Fast and Furious Probe Today?
Attorney General Eric Holder will meet with Fast and Furious nemesis Congressman Darrell Issa at 5:00 this afternoon in what could mark the end of the Congressional investigation of Barack Obama’s deadly gun smuggling scheme.
Last week, House Republican leaders at last agreed to schedule a vote on the Contempt of Congress charge Issa has long sought to bring against the Attorney General for 8 months of refusing to honor Congressional subpoenas. Deputy Attorney General James Cole quickly responded with a letter to House Government Reform Committee chair Issa, requesting a meeting to discuss ways of avoiding the vote. Issa agreed to meet with the Attorney General, but only if the Justice Department were willing to “…submit a serious proposal for how it intends to alter its refusal to produce critical documents subpoenaed by the Committee…”
One day later, on June 14th, Holder answered with a two page letter outlining the “compromise” offered by the Department. According to the Attorney General, the “extraordinary accommodation” proposed by the DOJ in that letter represents “… a serious, good faith effort to bring this matter to an amicable resolution.”
But based upon the contents of Holder’s letter, the representations of “serious” and “good faith” are outright lies. First of all, Holder’s willingness to “compromise with the Committee” is an insult to the right and authority of Congress to subpoena withheld documents. He then admits that the Department intends to provide documents that are “…outside the scope of the Committee’s interest in the inappropriate tactics used in Fast and Furious…” In other words, they will be items which the Committee has NOT subpoenaed and in which it undoubtedly has little or no interest!
Instead, Holder will offer an understanding of how the DOJ learned of those “inappropriate tactics” and what eventually prompted it to withdraw its infamous February 4th, 2011 letter to Congress claiming no gunwalking ever took place. And what this means is obvious—the Department will simply persist in its claim that “…until allegations about the inappropriate tactics used in Fast and Furious were made public, [DOJ] leadership was unaware of those tactics.” The Department didn’t know a thing until it was published in the New York Times!
Read More at Western Journalism. By Doug Book.
Photo Credit: The Aspen Institute (Creative Commons)
