F & F - Holder Deserves to Get Fried

Holder Deserves Contempt Slap For Fast And Furious

Posted 06/28/2012 06:27 PM ET

Scandal: The House vote to hold the attorney general in contempt is well-deserved for someone with a track record of incompetence and lying to Congress. He serves and protects a president just as unworthy.
It has been a mystery to us how baseball great Roger Clemens could be put on trial for lying to Congress but Attorney General Eric Holder was not. Holder has under oath made many misstatements of fact and contradictory statements and concealed documents on a life-and-death matter.
Hiding the documents that show who ordered and approved Operation Fast and Furious, the Obama administration gun-running operation that killed Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and ICE Agent Jaime Zapata, is far worse than steroids in baseball.
Now a bipartisan vote, including by some Democrats, holds Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, and it's completely justified.
Holder had the audacity to try to plea-deal with House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, saying he would provide a "fair compilation" if Issa canceled permanently contempt proceedings, certified Holder was in full compliance with subpoena requests and accepted the documents offered sight unseen.
Issa properly responded no deal.
Holder is a man whose story keeps changing and whose department does likewise. On Feb. 4, 2011, Assistant Attorney General Ron Welch, in response to the investigations by Rep. Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley of the gun-walking program run out of ATF's Phoenix office, wrote a letter stating that the "allegation that ATF 'sanctioned' or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons ... is false."
After a series of Friday document dumps exposed the Justice Department's deceit, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, in another letter to Congress, wrote, "Facts have come to light during the course of this investigation that indicate the Feb. 4 letter contains inaccuracies." In other words, the Justice Department lied to Congress.

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"It's Groundhog Day, and Brian Terry's family and taxpayers are still waiting for Fast and Furious answers from the Justice Department," Issa said earlier this year during hearings on the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal. "We will not wait until the next Groundhog Day to get answers for the American people."
Holder denied responsibility for and knowledge of Fast and Furious while he and his defenders sought to give him credit for stopping it. In May, he said he learned of it a few weeks earlier. Then how could he have stopped it in December 2010?
Or maybe the documents show something else, such as presidential involvement. After all, President Obama invoked executive privilege after claiming he never participated in any discussions of Fast and Furious or received any memos.
So why executive privilege if the executive was not involved, and why now instead of when documents were first requested?
This administration has no problem parading secrets on the hunt for Osama bin Laden, our double agent in Yemen or our involvement in using computer viruses to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program.
What's in the withheld documents that's considered more important than these secrets? A smoking gun on the floor of the Oval Office perhaps? Is Obama protecting his office or himself?
As House Oversight Committee Chairman Issa wrote to Obama on Monday: "Your privilege assertion means one of two things: Either you or your most senior advisers were involved in managing Operation Fast and Furious and the fallout ... or you are asserting a presidential power that you know to be unjustified solely for the purpose of further obstructing a congressional investigation."
If Holder and this administration are blameless and Fast and Furious was just tragically mismanaged, then provide the documents to show that.
We've seen and heard enough to suggest otherwise, that there is indeed something being deliberately hidden.
The families of Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata deserve to know the truth, as do all Americans, about how agents serving their country were murdered with weapons provided by their own government.