Archive for the ‘Eric Holder’ Category

POSTED ON MAY 15, 2013 BY STEVEN HAYWARD IN OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SCANDALS

I’ve been skeptical if not dismissive of all the loose talk that the multiple scandals piling up around Obama would be sufficient to bring about his impeachment–until this afternoon. Let’s remember that impeachment didn’t work out too well with Clinton, and the evidence of his bad behavior was a lot more direct than it is (so far) with Obama. In the case of Nixon, it will be recalled, it required a tape recording of his collaborating in the obstruction of justice to bring about the tipping point that doomed his presidency. But for that tape, he might have been able to tough it out as Clinton did.

But there’s always been an important contrast between the Nixon and Clinton cases–and the unfolding Obama mess–that tends to get lost in the Standard Heroic Narrative that liberals and journalists tell themselves at Watergate revival campfires. Nixon had deeply angered members of both parties in Congress with his attempts to gain control of pork barrel spending, such that his support among Republicans was already somewhat diminished when the storms of Watergate broke.

Hence the news this afternoon that the Obama administration may have even secretly obtained phone records for members of Congress is going to be a bombshell if true. See what Rep. Devin Nunes told Hugh Hewitt this afternoon:

Rep. Nunes: I don’t think people are focusing on the right thing when they talk about going after the AP reporters. The big problem that I see is that they actually tapped right where I’m sitting right now, the Cloak Room.

Hewitt: Wait a minute, this is news to me.

Nunes: The Cloak Room in the House of Representatives.

Hewitt: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Nunes: So when they went after the AP reporters, right? Went after all of their phone records, they went after the phone records, including right up here in the House Gallery, right up from where I’m sitting right now. So you have a real separation of powers issue that did this really rise to the level that you would have to get phone records that would, that would most likely include members of Congress, because as you know…

Hewitt: Wow.

Nunes: …members of Congress talk to the press all the time.

Hewitt: I did not know that, and that is a stunner.

Nunes: Now that is a separation of powers issue here, Hugh.

Only thing missing now is a batch of thumb drives hidden in someone’s pumpkin patch.

UPDATE: Nunes has walked back some of the details of this story this morning. Stay tuned. I expect journalists and members of the House won’t be much reassured by this.

by Ken KlukowskiUpdating our earlier report:
Details are emerging that when U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler read Dhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights, she went to his hospital room accompanied by a federal public defender (meaning taxpayer-funded) and an assistant U.S. attorney from the Massachusetts prosecutor’s office.
Reports say the FBI was only partway through questioning Tsarnaev to get intelligence to determine who else was involved in the plot and how broad it was. The FBI told federal lawmakers in classified briefings this week they were “stunned” when this judicial officer and lawyers from both sides showed up to read him his rights. Tsarnaev was providing what the FBI called valuable intelligence, when he was read his rights and then immediately stopped talking.
As we’ve explained before, the only danger with denying someone Miranda rights is that whenever the Constitution would require those rights to be announced, anything the defendant says after that point cannot be used to convict him in court. When the public-safety exception to Miranda applies—as it does here—police generally have about 48 hours of questioning the suspect before a judge would say the agents have had enough time to deal with imminent threats and therefore must now administer Miranda. The FBI was only 16 hours into those 48 hours when Miranda was given.
But that’s not a big deal in this case. We have high-quality video showing Tsarnaev planting the bomb that killed people shortly thereafter. We don’t need any confessions; prosecutors are quickly amassing enough evidence to get a capital conviction from a jury.
Former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said that under these circumstances, only Attorney General Eric Holder could personally have ordered this to happen. In a case with critical national interests at stake, only Holder could decide to cut short the FBI’s process.
Rumors in D.C. are that Holder did this to shut down the debate about whether to treat Tsarnaev as a national-security threat instead of an ordinary criminal defendant in the court system. Holder decided to go with latter, consistent with a far-left ideology, and America was deprived of additional intelligence that could be used to protect us against additional threats.
Breitbart News legal columnist Ken Klukowski is on faculty at Liberty University School of Law.

A court fight over documentation of the Fast and Furious scandal, where the U.S. government trafficked weapons to drug dealers in Mexico, is just ratcheting up now.

But Katie Pavlich, author of the New York Times bestseller “Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up,” news editor of Townhall.com and an expert on the Fast and Furious scandal, says the documents will be “damning” for Attorney General Eric Holder, and possibly even President Obama.

She said both politicians should be concerned “based on the evidence that Attorney General Eric Holder chang[ed] his testimony multiple times under oath in front of Congress.”

“I think these documents are pretty damning to him,” she told WND in an exclusive interview.

It was reported just last month that a federal judge has ordered the House Oversight Committee and Holder to work with a mediator in their battle over the paperwork from the Fast and Furious scandal.

The 2009 exposure of Fast and Furious by whistleblowers revealed the government’s deliberate decision to sell guns to prohibited buyers and allow them to be taken to drug cartel operations in Mexico.

Read Pavlich’s comments about the government’s false flag operation against gun dealers as well as how the government retaliated against the whistleblowers who revealed the scandal.

Pavlich earlier revealed how the government, when the operation blew up, decided to attack and retaliate against the whistleblowers who brought to the public’s attention the misbehavior.

She also explained earlier to WND how the goal of the operation was to create a false flag situation that the Obama administration could use to lobby for more gun control.

It was U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson who outlined the mediation plan, and a new status report will be due April 22. If no settlement is reached, a hearing will be held April 24 for the lawsuit by Congress against Holder over his decision to withhold tens of thousands of documents on the issue.

But Pavlich cites the timing and manner of how Obama decided to assert executive privilege over the documents – a move made only 15 minutes before a congressional contempt vote on Holder over the documentation.

“There is plenty of evidence that shows that they are liable,” Pavlich said. “These documents will show much more White House involvement.”

“The fact is there are at least 200,000 documents related to Fast and Furious,” said Pavlich, with “70,000 documents requested by the oversight committee and only 7,000 have been released. Many of which are completely blacked out.”

Pavlich said there is the possibility that not all of the documents related to Operation Fast and Furious will be released. There are certain situations when the justice system can keep information from the American people, she said.

She said the Department of Justice first stonewalled the documents, then released some following a court order, but the case now is “exactly where the Justice Department wants it to be, wrapped up in the court system.”

Pavlich does not expect the documents to be released at any time soon, as “there is no reason why they wouldn’t want” to delay release until after Obama leaves office. “They are going to delay it as long as possible.”

She said there are a number of repercussions possible, but “the next move” should be “to arrest Eric Holder on the Senate or House floor.”

Holder has defended his refusal to release the documents by saying the release could interfere with other investigations that the Justice Department is currently conducting.

This refusal to turn over all documents requested in a subpoena in 2012 has led to Holder being held in contempt in a bi-partisan vote.

The Office of the Inspector General earlier cleared Holder, but found fault with several other senior officials. One of the key reasons was that the IG said he found Holder “did not learn about Operation Fast and Furious until late January or early February of 2011 and was not aware of allegations of ‘gun walking’ in the investigation until February.”

However, there have been allegations he – and possibly Obama – knew much more, and much earlier, than they have admitted.

The BATF lost track of about 2,000 guns in Fast and Furious, two of which were linked to the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.

In another related lawsuit, Holder actually has asked the federal court to delay production of the documents indefinitely.

The case was brought by Washington watchdog Judicial Watch, and Holder responded with a motion to stay the case, which essentially would suspend action indefinitely.

“It is beyond ironic that the Obama administration has initiated an anti-gun violence push as it seeking to keep secret key documents about its very own Fast and Furious gun walking scandal,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Getting beyond the Obama administration’s smokescreen, this lawsuit is about a very simple principle: the public’s right to know the full truth about an egregious political scandal that led to the death of at least one American and countless others in Mexico. The American people are sick and tired of the Obama administration trying to rewrite FOIA law to protect this president and his appointees. Americans want answers about Fast and Furious killings and lies.”

While Congress had found Holder in both civil and criminal contempt, the U.S. attorney for D.C., Ronald Machen, chose to ignore the congressional resolution that would require him to bring charges.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/author-documents-damning-for-holder/#FMRQ4Y12lpEShJc4.99

Conservative Refocus Editorial

By Barry Secrest

The Conservatives in the Republican Party now appear to be separating themselves from the gang of worthlessly appeasing moderates who, in essence, have no earthly idea as to why they were actually elected as an opposing party, in the first place.

When Senator Rand Paul stood and delivered a 13 hour filibuster articulating precisely why killing American citizens without due process was clearly wrong and against the principles of the United States of America, the partisan divide that acted much like an ideological Berlin Wall, was at least temporarily melted away.

Liberals, Democrats, Libertarians , Independents and Conservatives had finally found something in which they could all agree.

But even better than that? America finally got to see only one of many core principles that sets the Tea Party Conservatives apart, from virtually any other political grouping. The fact that Rand Paul’s filibuster, as being set against a hellbent administration bound to have its authoritarian way no matter what, ultimately brought attention to bear on issues which the Media at large has ignored for over four long years now, was lost on none who have been sounding the alarms for what seems an eternity.

That same administration, in fact, was finally forced to accede defeat and clearly enunciate that drone strikes on Americans were not constitutional, and all because of one man’s courage and defiance against those in power.

Additionally, there are those usual suspects in the Republican Party who merely blow with the congressional winds. They of the lukewarm sect who seem more interested in defending the military-industrial complex, than actually promoting Liberty and Freedom and rights which are at the very core of ideals that our military is constitutionally sworn to protect.

My, how far we have fallen, and yet there always appears to be one who is willing to lead the way back to our core principles. Principles that guarantees individual rights “penultimate” as starkly opposed to the pandering of group rights and Alinksy-style mob rule, which has been the rule for far too long.

Our thoughts, Thanks and prayers go out to Sen. Paul Rand , Sen. Ted Cruz, and all of the others who showed support to Paul in beginning the job that so terribly needs to be done,and in earnest.

The People’s true resurgence, it would appear, is now Paul’s to lead. From Obama, as a leader full of promises unrealized, to Paul, a promising Leader finally realized.

Godspeed Gentlemen.

(ABC/UNIVISION) – On January 30, 2010, a commando of at least 20 hit men parked themselves outside a birthday party of high school and college students in Villas de Salvarcar, Ciudad Juarez. Near midnight, the assassins, later identified as hired guns for the Mexican cartel La Linea, broke into a one-story house and opened fire on a gathering of nearly 60 teenagers. Outside, lookouts gunned down a screaming neighbor and several students who had managed to escape. Fourteen young men and women were killed, and 12 more were wounded before the hit men finally fled.

Indirectly, the United States government played a role in the massacre by supplying some of the firearms used by the cartel murderers. Three of the high caliber weapons fired that night in Villas de Salvarcar were linked to a gun tracing operation run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), according to a Mexican army document obtained exclusively by Univision News.

Univision News identified a total of 57 more previously unreported firearms that were bought by straw purchasers monitored by ATF during Operation Fast and Furious, and then recovered in Mexico in sites related to murders, kidnappings, and at least one other massacre.

As part of Operation Fast and Furious, ATF allowed 1,961 guns to “walk” out of the U.S. in an effort to identify the high profile cartel leaders who received them. The agency eventually lost track of the weapons, and they often ended up in the hands of Mexican hit men , including those who ordered and carried out the attack on Salvarcar and El Aliviane, a rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juarez where 18 young men were killed on September 2, 2009.

In Mexico, the timing of the operation coincided with an upsurge of violence in the war among the country’s strongest cartels. In 2009, the northern Mexican states served as a battlefield for the Sinaloa and Juarez drug trafficking organizations, and as expansion territory for the increasingly powerful Zetas. According to documents obtained by Univision News, from October of that year to the end of 2010, nearly 175 weapons from Operation Fast and Furious inadvertently armed the various warring factions across northern Mexico.

“Many weapons cross the border and enter Mexico, but that [Fast and Furious] number, quantity and type of weapons had quite an impact in the war in this area” Jose Wall, an ATF agent stationed in Tijuana from 2009 to 2011, told Univision News.

Following the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry at the hands of Mexican bandits on December 14, 2010, media and Congressional investigations prompted hearings. On September 20, the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General report, which opened the door for sanctions of 14 ATF and DOJ officials.

In Washington, the Fast and Furious scandal became politicized, diverting the attention from the human cost in Mexico to political battles on Capitol Hill. In June, a vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt ignored the real tragedy in Mexico.

“Americans are not often moved by the pain of those outside [their country]…” Javier Sicilia, a Mexican poet whose son was killed in the midst of the violence, told Univision News. “But they are moved by the pain of their own. Well, turn around and watch the massacres.”

The Univision News investigation also found ATF offices from states besides Arizona pursued similar misguided strategies. In Florida, the weapons from Operation Castaway ended up in the hands of criminals inColombia, Honduras and Venezuela (link audio crumpler), the lead informant in the case told Univision News in a prison interview.

“When the ATF stopped me, they told me the guns were going to cartels,” Hugh Crumpler, a Vietnam veteran turned arms trafficker, told Univision News. “The ATF knew before I knew and had been following me for a considerable length of time. They could not have followed me for two months like they said they did, and not know the guns were going somewhere, and not want for that to be happening.”

Other firearms under ATF surveillance were permitted to leave the country from Texas, according to court documents and the exclusive testimony of Magdalena Avila Villalobos, the sister of an ICE agent who survived a confrontation with cartel hit men on a rural highway in Mexico on February 15, 2011. His fellow agent, Jaime Zapata, was killed during the attacks.

“It’s not from Arizona and Fast and Furious,” Avila Villalobos told Univision News, speaking in her brother’s stead for the first time, “but it’s a very similar operation…” She later added, “Those weapons that have been recovered, it’s been confirmed that they were weapons used in the shootout that killed Jaime Zapata and wounded Victor Avila.”

The Texas-based operation and the firearms linked to the attack were bought by two trafficking rings in the state, according to Raymond Thomas, the Zapata family’s lawyer.

Earlier this year, Texas Senator John Cornyn had echoed Thomas’ assertions . Moreover, on September 25, Congressman Darrell Issa and Senator Charles Grassley, the politicians behind the Fast and Furious congressional report released in July, sent a letter to the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, requesting an investigation into Avila’s and Zapata’s case.

http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/News/fast-furious-scandal-details-emerge-us-government-armed/story?id=17352694#.UGp5uxht1N3