It was hoped that the scandal-plagued Attorney General, (who was held in contempt of congress), would step down after the president’s first term, but Obama asked him to stay on for a second term, and horrifyingly enough, Holder accepted.
Now, in the wake of his latest scandal – the AP wiretapping brouhaha he has the MSM outraged, and it looks like this “utterly clueless” Attorney General will finally step down.
Michael Sneed of the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that “Holder’s days are numbered,” and Massachussetts Governor Deval Patrick is Obama’s pick to replace him.
Sneed hears President Barack Obama, who is this/close to Holder, has set his sights on Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick as a possible replacement “when the heat dies down on the latest hot-button scandals to hit the U.S. Justice Department,” said a top White House source.
Last year, Holder became a hot button over a congressional probe of the sale of government guns to drug cartels.
This time it’s the double whammy of an IRS scandal and the U.S. Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press reporters’ phone records — which has caused a media uproar.
Sneed hears that Obama will wait until the furor dies down so he and ValJar’s close bud will be able to leave with *ahem* “his reputation intact.”
Not sure how corrupt his replacement Deval Patrick is. We’ll have to look into that because the Obama Regime needs a strong enabler at Justice. I have heard he’s not a great governor.
UPDATE:
Well, well, looks like Patrick will fit in just fine with this crowd:
Attorney General Eric Holder faced tough questioning today in a House Judiciary hearing which focused largely on The IRS, AP wiretapping and Benghazi scandals.
The Chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Darrell Issa spent his time pestering Holder about assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, Thomas Perez, the radical ideologue who is Obama’s pick to be the next Secretary of labor. The gut-wrenchingly corrupt Perez has so spooked Republicans on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, they have delayed a vote on his nomination twice, now. The next committee vote on his nomination is scheduled for May 18.
Issa asked Holder why the DOJ hasn’t turned over the 1,200 private emails from Perez that have been requested in a bipartisan subpoena. Issa has accused Perez of using his private email account to conduct DOJ business.
Issa informed Holder that Perez had disclosed (apparently) “none then 1 then 2 then 34 then 35 emails that violated the federal records act. Your office has only let us see just yesterday or today, the to and from on the emails. (Good grief!) We have not seen the contents….” At this point, Senator Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) interjected and tried to run interference for Holder. She was eventually slapped down by the mild mannered committee chairman, Rep Bob Goldblatte.
Holder simpered, “I’m sure there must have been a good reason why only the to and from parts were released.”
“Yeah, you didn’t want us to see the details,” Issa shot back. (Woot!) At which point an agitated Holder responded, “That is inappropriate and is too consistent with the way in which you conduct yourself as a member of Congress. It’s unacceptable, and it’s shameful.”
Issa was giving the Attorney General, (who refuses to step down even after being held in Criminal Contempt of Congress), exactly the amount of respect he deserves, and I was glad to see it.
Two and a half years after one of his administration’s Fast and Furious guns killed border patrol agent, Brian Terry, and even as the guns continue to kill Mexican citizens, Obama used his trip to Mexico as a pretext to push for gun control, blaming our lax gun laws for gun violence in Mexico.
“Most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States,” President Obama said during a speech at Mexico’s Anthropology Museum. “I think many of you know that in America, our Constitution guarantees our individual right to bear arms. And as president, I swore an oath to uphold that right, and I always will.”
“But at the same time, as I’ve said in the United States, I will continue to do everything in my power to pass common-sense reforms that keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. That can save lives here in Mexico and back home in the United States. It’s the right thing to do,” Obama added.
Are we all supposed to have forgotten about his crooked administration’s Fast and Furious gun running scheme, already? Really?
Well, I haven’t forgotten, and if this president is going to be brazen enough to go to Mexico and blame the US for their gun violence, I’m happy to remind people.
Sharyl Attkisson of CBS reported in December on one of the latest Fast and Furious gun seizures.
Another weapon from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agency’s controversial Operation Fast and Furious was recently recovered at a Mexican crime scene, CBS News has learned. Congressional investigators say the crime scene was likely where a recent shootout took place between reported Sinaloa drug cartel members and the Mexican military, in which Sinaloa beauty queen Maria Susana Flores Gamez and four others were killed.
According to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the Justice Department did not notify Congress of the Fast and Furious firearm recovery in November, even though Grassley has requested an accounting of weapons that surface from the case. During Fast and Furious, ATF allowed more than 2,000 weapons, including giant .50-caliber guns, to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels and other criminals. Other so-called “gunwalking” operations by ATF let hundreds more guns hit the street. Most of them have never been recovered.
The latest known recovery is a Romanian AK-47-type WASR-10 rifle. It was picked up at a crime scene Nov. 23 in Ciudad Guamuchil, Sinaloa, Mexico. That’s the same area and weekend of the shootout involving Flores Gamez’s death. A trace report shows the rifle was purchased by Uriel Patino, the Fast and Furious suspect who allegedly bought more than 700 weapons while under ATF’s watch.
Here’s a common sense reform that I think could go a long way toward keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people.
Wow, this is really disturbing.We have an Attorney General who was held in criminal contempt of Congress, and who holds the United States Congress that did so, equally in contempt. He says that being held in contempt of Congress is no biggie because he doesn’t respect the 255 House members (including 17 Democrats) who voted in favor of it.
In a wide-ranging, exclusive interview Wednesday, ABC News’ Pierre Thomas asked Holder how he reacted when House Republicans voted with 17 Democrats to hold him in contempt of Congress last June over ATF’s “Fast and Furious” gun scandal.
“It’s something that I think was unfortunate,” Holder said. “I think it’s a result of this kind of partisan sport that I think we engage in here in Washington far too often.”
Holder said the votes it didn’t bother him, considering who cast them.
“But I have to tell you that for me to really be affected by what happened, I’d have to have respect for the people who voted in that way,” Holder told ABC News. “And I didn’t, so it didn’t have that huge an impact on me.”
Sharyl Attkisson of CBS, reports that “heads are beginning to roll” two years after the fast and furious scandal came to light. I would argue that heads aren’t rolling until we see these guys in orange jumpsuits….hundreds of people are dead because of this…
William McMahon, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) official who was in charge of field operations during the controversial operation, has been fired, according to his attorney Mark Zaid who told CBS News “we will be appealing the decision.”
Other ATF managers reportedly face similar fates, and announcements could be made soon, though neither they nor their attorneys would confirm it. They are: Mark Chait, who was ATF’s assistant director for field operations; Bill Newell, who was ATF’s Special Agent in Charge of Phoenix; and George Gillett, Newell’s second in command. Chait’s attorney David Laufman stated in an email: “Mr. Chait has not been advised of any adverse finding or recommendation by the Professional Review Board at ATF, and any such action would be utterly without merit.”
Another key Fast and Furious figure who’s leaving the Justice Department today is Attorney General Eric Holder’s chief of staff Gary Grindler. Grindler was faulted by the Justice Department’s Inspector General for not informing Holder about the “significant and troubling” link between ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious, and rifles found at the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry on December 15, 2010.
In announcing his departure this week, Holder made no mention of Fast and Furious, and said Grindler “has demonstrated time and again his good judgment and an ability to make the tough – and correct – decisions.” Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who led the House investigation into Fast and Furious, said Grindler’s “departure from the Justice Department is warranted and long overdue.”
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, which neither the Justice Department nor ATF would confirm, two other Phoenix-based agents have been recommended for disciplinary action: David Voth, who led the team that conducted Fast and Furious; and the lead agent on the case Hope MacAllister. According to the Wall Street Journal, they would receive demotions, reprimands and/or transfers.
The managers recommended for termination, according to people familiar with the matter, are Mark Chait, former assistant director for field operations; William McMahon, who oversaw field operations in the Western U.S.; William Newell, former chief of the ATF’s Phoenix office; and George Gillett, the No. 2 official in the ATF’s Phoenix office.
In addition to dismissal, the officials’ security clearances would be revoked if the recommendations are accepted, according to the people familiar with the matter, a move that could hurt their future job prospects.
David Laufman, attorney for Mr. Chait, said “any adverse finding or recommendation by the PRB would be utterly without merit.”
Mr. Newell’s attorney, Paul Pelletier, declined to comment. Peter Noone, Mr. Gillett’s attorney, also declined to comment, saying he hadn’t received official notification.
Mr. McMahon has been the subject of criticism from lawmakers because he took a leave from his ATF post to take a global security management job for a bank, pending his planned retirement later this month. ATF officials took the additional step of dismissing Mr. McMahon last week, according to officials familiar with the matter, though that move is subject to appeal.
“Mr. McMahon was unfortunately the victim of a politically charged football match over an operation that was officially sanctioned,“ said Mr. McMahon’s lawyer, Mark S. Zaid. “As a result, he was terminated less than a month shy of achieving his 25-year pension. He’ll absolutely be appealing that decision.”
The two other ATF employees subject to disciplinary proceedings are David Voth, an ATF Phoenix supervisor who rejected complaints from agents about the operation, and Hope McAllister, a lead agent in the operation. Mr. Voth would be demoted to a street agent and Ms. McAllister would be subject to a reprimand and a disciplinary transfer to another ATF post.
Mr. Voth’s attorney declined to comment. Ms. McAllister didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. An ATF spokesman declined to comment.
Yes, it’s probably best for these attorneys not to comment…
Mr Voth, sometimes referred to as “the Omelet Man”, made this infamous statement to Agent John Dodson when he complained that letting guns walk was going to get people killed.
“If you’re going to make an omelet, you’ve got to scramble some eggs.”
He may or may not lose his job over this.
FYI, it should be noted that the DOJ’s initial reaction to the scandal was to promote key supervisors Voth, Newell, and McMahon and bring them to Washington DC:
The ATF has promoted three key supervisors of a controversial sting operation that allowed firearms to be illegally trafficked across the U.S. border into Mexico.
All three have been heavily criticized for pushing the program forward even as it became apparent that it was out of control. At least 2,000 guns were lost and many turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and two at the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.
***
The three supervisors have been given new management positions at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. They are William G. McMahon, who was the ATF’s deputy director of operations in the West, where the illegal trafficking program was focused, and William D. Newell and David Voth, both field supervisors who oversaw the program out of the agency’s Phoenix office.
Bill Newell was the one who sent Fast and Furious information to then-Director of North American Affairs for the National Security Council Kevin O’Reilly with the caution “You didn’t get these from me,” that O’Reilly was removed from the country to a State Department assignment in Iraq, and that, even with his return, the White House Counsel will not allow him to testify to the Oversight Committee, and he has refused to cooperate with the Office of inspector General.
Why does Kevin O’Reilly get to skate in all of this?
Holder’s Chief of Staff, Gary Grindler, a key player in the Fast and Furious cover-up, is leaving the department this week, reports Legal Times:
Grindler, who joined the department’s Criminal Division as a deputy assistant attorney general under the leadership of Lanny Breuer in April 2009, served as the second-in-command at DOJ in 2010 after the departure of David Ogden.
Holder named Grindler—a former white-collar defense and government investigations partner at King & Spalding—chief of staff in January 2011. (Grindler, who had worked under Holder during the Clinton administration, replaced Kevin Ohlson.)
Holder said in a statement today that Grindler “has distinguished himself as an exceptional public servant, a trusted advisor, and a principled leader.”
“He has demonstrated time and again his good judgment and an ability to make the tough—and correct—decisions,” Holder said in the statement. “I cannot imagine the Department without Gary, though I wish him all the best as he considers opportunities in the private sector—and I know that his extraordinary contributions will continue to guide our efforts.”
The timing of Grindler’s decision to leave the department comes between administrations, when it’s not uncommon to see changes in federal agency leadership posts.
Rep Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee says Grindler’s departure is “long overdue”:
“Gary Grindler was appropriately faulted by his Department’s own Inspector General for keeping information about a connection between the murder of a Border Patrol Agent and a mishandled department operation away from the Attorney General and the Department of Homeland Security. His departure from the Justice Department is warranted and long overdue,” Issa said in a statement. “Other figures in Operation Fast and Furious are currently being evaluated for their conduct in the reckless effort that needlessly placed lives in danger. I expect more departures and discipline to come.”
A report on Fast and Furious from the Justice Department’s inspector general recommended disciplinary action against Grindler and 13 other officials. A report from Issa’s committee took direct aim at Grindler, accusing him of “pass[ing] the buck to underlings” and failing to take charge of the department.
Margaret Richardson, currently Grindler’s deputy, will take over his position.
But as David Codrea of the Gun Rights Examiner points out, Issa is “parroting the unknowable” when he asserts that Grindler kept information away from Holder.
How the IG has been able to determine that with certainty, and why Issa accepts it with full faith are unknown. At most, all anyone can say with assurance is they haven’t been able to prove if Grindler communicated with Holder about a program under the attorney general’s authority, where enforcers and prosecutors were up to their necks in a sanctioned operation that has produced lethal collateral consequences .
Grindler, as Gun Rights Examiner and Sipsey Street Irregulars reported in November of last year, had generated notes “including about quantities of guns bought by straw purchasers and dollars spent.” He had detailed knowledge of a program that could present grave repercussions for his boss and the administration, and everyone is supposed to conclude he just kept all that to himself based on what?
Issa’s own release, in quoting the Joint Staff Report, prepared for himself and Sen. Chuck Grassley, gives good cause to not leap to such circumstantially unsupported conclusions.
“Gary Grindler [indicated that he could ‘not recall’ or did ‘not know’] 29 times during his interview with investigators,” the release quotes from the report.
The serial stonewalling on the part of the Justice Dept resulted in a contempt of Congress citation for withholding subpoenaed documents. Moreover, the White House aided and abetted the cover-up by claiming executive privilege, so how anyone can know with any certainty what Grindler may or may not have shared with Holder is anyone’s guess at this point.
So, to sum up, according to the IG report and House investigators, Grindler kept information about Fast and Furious away from the Attorney General, passed the buck to underlings, failed to take charge of the department, and could not recall or did not know the answers to 29 of the House investigators’ questions.
He’s leaving with full retirement benefits, I presume.
Because he is what Holder considers “an exceptional public servant, a trusted advisor, and a principled leader.”
Ugh. After indication last week that the scandal plagued Attorney General might step down because he was “running out of gas”, comes news viaThe NY Postthat Obama is holding on to Eric Holder as the nation’s top law-enforcement official:
The newly re-elected president asked his controversial attorney general to stay for the second term, and Holder has agreed despite enduring a firestorm of criticism from Republican lawmakers.
“I don’t know if everyone in the White House wants him [Holder] to stay, but the important guy does, and that’s all that matters,” said one person briefed on the matter.
Holder’s office declined to comment.
I mentioned, last week, that contrary to what you may hear from the regime’s media toadies, Holder has not been completely “cleared” and “exonerated” of wrongdoing in Fast and Furious.
In the wake of the IG report, Andrew Cohen, a liberal legal analyst and Atlantic columnist said it best, “avoiding perjury or obstruction of justice, or being ignorant of your department’s biggest scandal, is no cause for relief. … There’s no dispute that he should have known.”
It doesn’t exactly instill confidence that his entire defense was “I’m a completely incompetent boob.” Yet that is the defense that supposedly “cleared” him of wrongdoing in Fast and Furious, the bloody gun running fiasco that has already caused hundreds of murders in Mexico and along the US border and will continue to do so for many years to come. And that is looking at it in the most charitable light.
Awesome. Four more years of that guy as our top law enforcement official..
Thisisn’t especially earth shattering, given that Attorney Generals rarely stay beyond one term, and Obama is likely to have someone equally corrupt on tap to replace him.
Attorney General Eric Holder said on Thursday he has not decided whether to stay on as the chief U.S. law enforcement officer in President Barack Obama’s second term.
Holder, speaking to law students at the University of Baltimore, said he still must speak with Obama and with his own family and ask himself, “Do I have some gas left in the tank?”
“That’s something that I’m in the process now of trying to determine,” he said.
Reuters made sure to note that “Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives said a congressional inquiry into Fast and Furious was political, and the Justice Department’s inspector general cleared Holder of any wrongdoing.”
See, the whole Fast and Furious thing was a racist Republican witch hunt, and Holder was totally cleared of any wrongdoing, there. And if you doubt me, google IG report clears Eric Holder of any wrongdoingand see how many hundreds of pages come up attesting to that. Holder is as clean as the wind driven snow, just so you know. No doubt that’s what the history books will say, too.
The Justice Department’s Public Affairs director, Tracy Schmaler, has said the inspector general’s report “cleared,” “exonerated,” and “vindicated” Holder, claims that a variety of media outlets and pundits have repeated uncritically. But Cohen, a left-leaning journalist, plainly was not convinced.
“Even viewing the documents and investigation in a light most favorable to the current head of the Justice Department, even discounting the conspiracy theories offered by the Administration’s most ardent critics, the Inspector General’s report tells us that Holder ultimately failed to do what he absolutely had to do at Justice when he succeeded caretaker Attorney General Michael Mukasey in early 2009,” Cohen wrote.
As one of the administration’s most ardent critics, I don’t discount the “conspiracy theories,” myself. There are no other theories out there to explain why the administration thought it was a good idea to walk thousands of guns into the hands of Mexican bandits to kill people with.
Cohen added that, while the inspector general concluded that Holder was not personally aware of Fast and Furious until February 2011, “avoiding perjury or obstruction of justice, or being ignorant of your department’s biggest scandal, is no cause for relief. … There’s no dispute that he should have known.”
Cohen also criticized Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer and the consistent failure of administration of officials to communicate.
“The [inspector general's] report confirms that Breuer knew about the program in 2010 and yet failed to tell his boss about it,” Cohen wrote. “Never mind what Breuer then said to Congress; this initial failure to report the critical information up the line is inexcusable and unacceptable. And so is Holder’s failure this week even to mention, in his remarks responding to the OIG report, what Breuer belatedly conceded was his ‘mistake.’ Breuer should have resigned long ago. And, since he didn’t, this week Holder should have fired him. Trust me, the Department can live without Lanny Breuer.”
Republicans are calling for more heads to roll in the wake of a lengthy inspector general report on the botched “Fast and Furious” operation that culminated in the immediate resignations of two top officials.
Lanny Breuer, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s (DOJ) criminal division, is at the top of the GOP’s list of officials they are pressing to step down or be fired.
“Lanny Breuer has failed to lead the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice in a manner worthy of that title,” said Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), a former federal prosecutor, in a statement to The Hill.
“He failed to connect ‘dots’ on gun walking that a summer law clerk intern could have seen. By either errors of omission or commission, two demonstrably false letters were sent from the DOJ to committees of congress. Out of respect for the department and what the concept of Justice means, he needs to resign.”
***
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has also called on Breuer to be removed. As the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Grassley initiated Congress’ inquiries into “Fast and Furious” early last year. After calling for Breuer’s resignation 10 months ago, Grassley is maintaining that he should step aside in the wake of the IG’s report, his office told The Hill.“I’m not somebody who flippantly calls for resignations,” said Grassley, on the Senate floor in December. “I’ve done oversight for many years, and in all that time I don’t ever remember coming across a government official who so blatantly placed sparing agencies embarrassment over protecting the lives of citizens.“He has failed to do his job of insuring that the government operate [properly], including holding people accountable. Because of that Mr. Breuer needs to go immediately.”
Not that any of this matters. Like I said, even if they stepped down, they’d be replaced with equally, corrupt left-wing ideologues, although it would be a tall order to find anyone even more corrupt than those two…
Think about it. As bad as the last four years have been, the next four years will be even worse because the criminals in this administration will no longer be restrained by politics.
I would love to be a fly on the wall of the Obama White House as increasingly, mainstream media outlets (other than “Faux” News) cover stories that are (let us say) *unhelpful* to his reelection. There are almost certainly behind closed doors screaming fits, and lamps flying while President Creature Comforts and Commander of Me-Time kicks back in Las Vegas.
President Barack Obama arrived in Nevada last night to begin three days of debate preparation at the Westin Lake Las Vegas Resort, a luxurious golf community just a few miles from the Las Vegas strip.
Cool as a cucumber, I’m sure, and kept away from unpleasantness like this:
While the Obama regime was using bogus talking points about an out of control mob upset over an internet video, CNN’s sources weren’t corroborating any of it. Where was the regime getting its “information”? Did they really think they would get away with such an outrageous coverup so close to an election?
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform announced tonight that they will be holding a hearing on the Benghazi attack and cover-up.
A letter will be sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday. The hearing will focus on the previous attacks in Benghazi leading up to the consulate attack on 9-11.
Mark your calendars, the hearing is set for October 10.
Almost entirely missing from the debate surrounding the anti-U.S. attacks in Libya is the administration’s policy of arming jihadists to overthrow Mideast governments. But in the case of Libya, the arming of jihadists may have directly resulted in the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the subsequent murder of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, private security employees and former U.S. Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.
After changing its story multiple times, the White House finally conceded the deadly assault on the U.S. consulate was a planned attack linked to al-Qaida, as per information released by national intelligence agencies.
The admission prompted Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., to call for the resignation of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice for pushing the narrative that the attacks were part of a spontaneous uprising.
King may instead want to focus his investigative energies on the larger story: How the Obama administration armed Libyan rebels who were known to include al-Qaida and other anti-Western jihadists, and how the White House is currently continuing that same policy in Syria.
During the revolution against Muammar Gadhafi’s regime, the U.S. admitted to directly arming the rebel groups.
At the time, rebel leader Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi boasted in an interview that a significant number of the Libyan rebels were al-Qaida gunmen, many of whom had fought U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
White House sources confirm that in the run up to the decision to involve U.S. military personnel, President Obama was fully briefed that a large portion of the Libyan rebel forces most active in areas around such critical cities as Benghazi had ties to al Qaeda, particularly Al Qaeda in Iraq, the wing of the terrorist group that killed hundreds of U.S. troops in Iraq.
“He was warned that should we reach a point where NATO needs to re-arm the rebels — it appears that time is coming now — we will be arming the very enemy that we have been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan,” says a career employee at the State Department. “Secretary Clinton knows it, the White House knows it, but we’re working with these thugs anyway because the President thinks it’s the moral thing to do in the face of Gaddafi.”
Someone should ask President Eye Candy if it still feels like “the moral thing to do” in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack.
In the mean time, Mexico’s government has put Holder’s death toll at over 200 dead, not to mention U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed by Mexican drug smugglers armed by Holder’s Justice Department.
What had happened was Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez, or “El Diego,” the onetime leader of the Juarez Cartel’s La Linea, sent his team to the birthday party to kill what he thought were members of the rival Sinaloa Cartel.
La Linea is the “enforcement arm” of the Juarez Cartel. According to the El Paso Times, El Diego told Mexican authorities after his capture that La Linea’s mission was, among other things, to “eliminate the members of the Sinaloa cartel in Ciudad Juárez.”
“Regarding the party in Villas de Salvarcar, I was informed that there were some who belonged to the Sinaloa Cartel,” El Diego said in police interrogation videos. “I send the boys, and when they are there, they tell me that they have already located them, and so the order to start working is given.”
When El Diego gave the order, Univision said “seven vans blocked the streets so that nearly 20 hitmen from the Juarez Cartel could unleash the bloodshed with R15 rifles and 9mm pistols.”
“What no one in Mexico ever knew was that some of the weapons used in this massacre were part of a secret gun tracing operation ran by the ATF, according to this exclusive document obtained by Univision News,” Univision reported.
That document was a Mexican Army document that stated, according to Univision: “[t]hree 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).” That operation was Fast and Furious.
An onlooker who went solely by “Gloria” told Univision, “It looked like a war. A war where one only side was shooting.”
Luz Davila and her husband then “rushed down the street,” Univision said, to find out what happened. “Everything went dark,” Davila said. “I could only say that it wasn’t possible.”
“I went inside the house and the first thing I see is the older one, he was face down,” Luz Davila said. “And right ahead was the younger one. He was still alive.”
Both ended up dying. Univision said one of Luz’s sons died on scene and the other died 14 hours later at the hospital.
I’ll stop there – the next line is kinda hard to take…
Not the sort of story the regime wants coming out a month before election day, right?
…Obama appeared on a Univision program Thursday night and faced tough questions over Fast and Furious, which reportedly led to many deaths in Mexico, and not just the killing of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. He defended the refusal to give Congress relevant documents by describing them as “internal communications that were not related to the actual Fast and Furious operation.”
As Horowitz’s comments make clear, this is dishonest spin. On Fast and Furious, the president has zero credibility.
Graham and other Republicans were livid after the Obama administration issued the guidance on Friday telling contractors that their legal costs would be covered due to canceled contracts under sequestration, but only if they did not issue layoff notices before sequestration occurs — and before the November election.
“I will do everything in my power to make sure not one taxpayer dollar is spent reimbursing companies for failure to comply with WARN Act,” Graham told The Hill in a phone interview Monday. “That is so beyond the pale — I think it’s patently illegal.”
Gee, ya think, Senator?
So there are several major scandals bubbling up as the Preezy of the United Skeezy prepares for his big debate, which apparently everyone (including he himself) expects him to lose.
“Early this morning Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents assigned to the Brian Terry Station were involved in a shooting near Naco, Ariz. Preliminary reports indicate one agent has died from his injuries and another sustained non-life threatening wounds. The injured agent has been airlifted to the hospital. Names are being withheld pending notification of next of kin. More updates will follow as appropriate. The incident investigation is being led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office.”
WASHINGTON — Investigators looking into lavish spending for a pair of Veterans Affairs training conferences in 2011 found evidence that department employees improperly accepted gifts, wasted hundreds of thousands on unneeded expenses and exhibited “serious management weaknesses” in handling taxpayer dollars.
The investigation report released Monday by the VA Inspector General’s office also says that the department’s top human resources official, Assistant Secretary for Human Resources and Administration John Sepulveda, “failed to provide proper guidance and oversight to his senior executives” and lied to investigators about details of the conference.
Sepulveda resigned on Sunday, a VA spokesman confirmed. He had served in that position since May 2009, as the department’s top advisor on administrative and employee management issues.
VA officials released a statement saying “misuse of taxpayer dollars is completely unacceptable” and calling the actions cited in the report “serious lapses in oversight, judgment, and stewardship.”
With political and GWOT stories dominating the news cycle, this week, the newly released IG report on Fast and Furious, and ensuing political fallout has been somewhat neglected.
In case you missed it, Oversight and Reform Chairman Darrell Issa went on Fox and Friends, Thursday morning, to discuss the IG report and the continued need to hold Lanny Breuer and Eric Holder accountable for the cover-up at the Justice Dept.
Issa was also asked about the recent Daily Caller reportabout collusion between MMFA and the DOJ.
Matthew Boyle of the Daily Callerhas that transcript:
“Not since Richard Nixon have we seen a president who puts together an enemies list and has a whole team pursuing it,” House oversight committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa said Thursday morning on the Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends.” “That’s what’s happened in this administration. It’s sad. It’s not the America I want to see going forward. I sincerely hope that after the election, regardless, the American people will have made a statement that they won’t tolerate this.”
Issa said he expects Congress will look into whether or not political advocacy organizations like Media Matters should enjoy tax-exempt statuses normally reserved for apolitical charities, too.
“Congress should address that tax loophole for entities that are really not charities,” Issa said, adding that Media Matters “is certainly one of them.”
Issa also said he’d like to see DOJ Office of Public Affairs Director Tracy Schmaler terminated for working with Media Matters.
Yes, please – time to look into tax exempt MMFA – what are you waiting for Congress?
Bret Baier on Fox’s Special Report also interviewed Issa, yesterday.
Issa stated, “Just because you’re not convicted doesn’t mean you’re vindicated,” adding “Eric Holder didn’t do his job, didn’t care enough to even call the family. And today, today finally, one of the people who should have been gone a year and a half ago, resigned, but only after the IG pointed specifically to him, but he also pointed to others and areas in which there’s still more work to be done, including the unsealing of 14 wiretaps – things that the Atty General has fought us on, the documents from post Feb 4th were the reason that the Atty Gen was held in contempt, and the IG said these need to made public.”
It’s been a key subject of dispute throughout the “Fast and Furious” saga but one shrouded in mystery: whether wiretap applications reviewed and approved by senior Justice Department officials should have tipped them off about the dangerous tactics being used in the operation.
House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who obtained the wiretap applications surreptitiously from a whistleblower, said yes.
Attorney General Eric Holder and Congressional Democrats who reviewed them adamantly said no.
But because the documents were under court seal, the public was only afforded a glimpse of what was in them when Issa inserted a letter that characterized and quoted from them in the Congressional Record.
Now Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, is broadly siding with Issa, saying in testimony before the Oversight panel today that the wiretap applications should have raised red flags to senior officials who approved them.
Asked by several Republican lawmakers at the hearing whether reading the wiretap applications would have indicated that guns were being “walked,” the tactic employed in Fast and Furious, Horowitz said “yes.”
Committee Hearing on IG Report: The DOJ Office of Inspector General Examines the Failures of Operation Fast & Furious:
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing entitled, “IG Report: The Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General Examines the Failures of Operation Fast and Furious” on Thursday, September 20, 2012.
Rep Gowdy (at 1:01:20) made note at the beginning of his questioning that the DOJ was not vindicated despite what some of the headlines were saying.
Our Dept. of Justice has a propaganda minister who interfaces with the propagandists at left wing media outfit, MMFA which in turn churns out the regime’s talking points for other left wing media organs like MSNBC to disseminate. America’s becoming like a third world fascist state under Obama – we have our own propaganda ministry and everything – isn’t that exciting?
Internal Department of Justice emails obtained by The Daily Caller show Attorney General Eric Holder’s communications staff has collaborated with the left-wing advocacy group Media Matters for America in an attempt to quell news stories about scandals plaguing Holder and America’s top law enforcement agency. Dozens of pages of emails between DOJ Office of Public Affairs Director Tracy Schmaler and Media Matters staffers show Schmaler, Holder’s top press defender, working with Media Matters to attack reporters covering DOJ scandals. TheDC obtained the emails through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. . . .
Emails sent in September and November 2010 show Schmaler working with Media Matters staffer Jeremy Holden on attacking news coverage of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation scandal.
Holden attacked former DOJ Civil Rights Division attorneys J. Christian Adams and Hans von Spakovsky on Sept. 20, 2010 for what he called an attempt “to reignite the phony New Black Panther Party scandal.”
Read his full report. The emails are downloaded, here.
Holder is spending five days in the Dominican Republic, Barbados, and Trinidad. I have learned from sources with direct knowledge of Tracy Schmaler’s goings-on that the spin-mistress of the Justice Department Office of Public Affairs is accompanying Holder on this tropical jaunt. . . .
Tracy Schmaler is a name which may grow into a household one as the lies surrounding Fast and Furious unravel faster. . . .
She is the witchy federal employee who screams and cusses at reporters for NBC, the Washington Times, CBS and the American Spectator, yet doesn’t get fired because thug is so in style in this administration.
Today Attkisson appeared on The Laura Ingraham Show and detailed the reaction of White House and DOJ spokesthings when she questioned them last Friday.
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6:05 – Laura: So they were literally screaming at you?
Attkisson: Yes. Well the DOJ woman was just yelling at me. The guy from the White House on Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed at me. [Laura: Who was the person? Who was the person at Justice screaming?] Eric Schultz. Oh, the person screaming was [DOJ spokeswoman] Tracy Schmaler, she was yelling not screaming. And the person who screamed at me was Eric Schultz at the White House.”
Brian Terry is the best-known victim of “Fast and Furious,” the Obama administration’s “de facto conventional-weapons proliferation program,” as Delroy Murdock aptly called it.
Between November 2009 and January 2011, Team Obama arranged for licensed firearms dealers to sell guns to straw buyers, who transferred them to known violent criminals in Mexico. Among these firearms, two AK-47s were found near Rio Rico, Ariz., where suspected smugglers fatally shot Terry, a 40-year-old former Marine, on Dec. 15, 2010.
While Terry epitomizes those whom Fast and Furious has harmed, he is not its sole casualty.
In another Obama administration “gun-walking” escapade, in February 2011 in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, members of Los Zetas drug gang ambushed two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Jaime Zapata, 32, was fatally shot and Victor Avila was wounded.
Largely overlooked is this plan’s calamitous impact on Mexico, its people and U.S.-Mexican relations.
“Our federal government knowingly, willfully, purposefully gave the drug cartels nearly 2,000 weapons — mainly AK-47s — and allowed them to walk,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told NBC News recently. These arms were supposed to lead federal agents in Phoenix to the Mexican thugs who acquired them. Instead, Fast and Furious guns melted into Mexico.
Approximately 300 Mexicans have been killed or wounded by Fast and Furious guns, estimates former Mexican attorney general Victor Humberto Benitez Trevino.
Today, via Gateway Pundit, Mexican authorities announced that they have detained a man accused of fatally shooting Brian Terry back in 2010.
Mexican police detained a man accused of fatally shooting a U.S. Border Patrol agent almost two years ago in Arizona in a botched U.S. operation to track guns smuggled across the border, the government said Friday.
Federal police detained Jesus Leonel Sanchez Meza on Thursday in Sonora state, which borders Arizona, where agent Brian Terry was shot dead in December 2010, the Public Security Ministry said. The Mexican Attorney General’s Office plans to extradite Sanchez Meza to the United States, the ministry said in a statement.
Two guns found at the scene were traced to a botched U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) sting operation called “Fast and Furious” that allowed weapons to slip across the border. It was not clear, however, if those weapons fired the fatal shots.
Four others have been accused in the shooting, the ministry said. Officials did not say if they were also being detained.
Reuters managed to resist resorting to hackery in order to run interference for the regime, but ABC sure didn’t, as Andy from AoSHQ bitterly notes:
In Operation Fast and Furious and at least three earlier probes during the administration of President George W. Bush, agents in Arizona employed a risky tactic called gun-walking …
Guess whose names they don’t mention in the entire article.
Also, conflating these various operations is complete bullshit. If you’re going to call OF&F “botched”, you need to be able to explain how it was supposed to work.
In one of the operations not run by Barack Obama and Eric Holder, we used GPS trackers in the guns and suspended it when the trackers didn’t work. And in all of the operations not run by Barack Obama and Eric Holder, Mexican officials were working with us so we actually had an effin’ plan to track the guns on the other side of the border that didn’t involve recovering them from crime scenes.
….After they had murdered people! We get so sick of having to point that out.
Last July, the DOJ unsealed the indictments against five men for the murder of Brian Terry. A week later, Town Hall’s Katie Pavlich, having read the incident report, discovered that four men had been detained by the ATF on the night of Terry’s murder, one was gunshot, and has remained in custody – three were let go.
Guns from Operation Fast and Furious were left at the scene. Four of the men indicted are on the run and believed to be in Mexico. Those men are Jesus Rosario Favela-Astorga, Ivan Soto-Barraza, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes and Lionel Portillo-Meza. Manuel Osario Arellanes was shot on the night Terry was killed and has remained in custody since. His brother, Rito Osorio-Arellanes is also in custody and has been charged not for Terry’s murder, but for other related crimes.
BORTAC shooting incident report 11 TCANGL 121570000077, obtained by Townhall, indicates authorities had four suspects in custody at the time of Terry’s murder and let them go. Multiple updates in the report show “four men in custody,” one of the men in custody being wounded, with another at large but “spotted.” Five men in total. It has been confirmed multiple times that there were five bandits in Peck Canyon, Ariz. the night Terry was killed.
No, the names don’t match up exactly. Not sure what the deal there is.
With Sanchez’s arrest, three suspects in Terry’s death still remain at large.
RELATED:
Something positive that came out of this whole mess, via KVOA News Tucson:
On Thursday, the Terry family and Jim Click launched the First Annual Brian Terry Foundation Benefit Dinner. It is set for Monday, September 17 at the JW Marriott Starr Pass Resort and Spa in Tucson. The proceeds will help the Brian Terry Foundation continue it’s work. The website raises funds to help families of fallen U.S. Border Patrol Agents, establish educations scholarships and it raises awareness for border security issues.
To kick things off Thursday, the Jim Click Automotive Team presented the foundation with a $25,000 check.
Is this the sort of story the Lightworker wants breaking on the day of his big DNC speech? I think not. No more than he wants Bob Woodward’s very unhelpful new book, The Price of Politics to be leaked, today, to the media.
Not helpful to the president’s case. Not helpful at all. America does not need for more years of an in-over-his-head whiner; a petulant egomaniac who does not seem to understand the most basic of economic principles and who is a lousy negotiator to boot.
According to internal emails between senior officials at Gallup, obtained by The Daily Caller, there’s more than just petulant egomania afoot in the Obama regime. Michael Barone famously predicted “the coming thugocracy” in Oct 2008, and the Obama administration has proven him right time and time again, as it’s abused its power whenever necessary.
In the latest exciting episode of “the Obama thugocracy”, a Gallup official describes the not so subtle attempts by David (The Red) Axelrod to intimidate the polling firm when its numbers were not favorable to the president as “ a Godfather situation”.
This is unbelievable stuff that might help explain why so many other polls are consistently skewed in Obama’s favor.
Matthew Boyle has the story:
In April, Axelrod tweeted that a poll showing Mitt Romney with a 48-43 percent lead over Obama was “saddled with some methodological problems,” directing his Twitter followers to read a National Journal story criticizing Gallup polls showing a Romney lead.In that National Journal piece, Ron Brownstein wrote that the polls showing Romney leading the president had “a sample that looks much more like the electorate in 2010 than the voting population that is likely to turn out in 2012.”Internally, Gallup officials discussed via email how to respond Axelrod’s accusations. One suggested that it “seems like a pretty good time for a blog response,” and named a potential writer.In response to that suggestion, another senior Gallup official wrote — in an email chain titled “Axelrod vs. Gallup” — that the White House “has asked” a senior Gallup staffer “to come over and explain our methodology too.”
That Gallup official, the email continued, “has a plan that includes blogging and telling WH [the White House] he would love to have them come over here etc. This could be a very good moment for us to [show] our super rigorous methods compared to weak samples etc. …”
The writer named several news organizations with their own polling methodologies, all of which resulted in numbers more favorable to President Obama at the time.
In response to that email, a third senior Gallup official said he thought Axelrod’s pressure “sounds a little like a Godfather situation.”
“Imagine Axel[rod] with Brando’s voice: ‘[Name redacted], I’d like you to come over and explain your methodology…You got a nice poll there….would be a shame if anything happened to it…’”
In a second email chain titled “slanderous link about Gallup methodology,” another senior Gallup official noted that a Washington Examiner story on Axelrod’s anti-Gallup tweet was “on [the] Drudge [Report] right now,” before writing that the episode was “[s]o politically motivated, it’s laughable.”
“As they say in b-ball: he’s trying to work the refs,” that official wrote to other senior Gallup staffers. “What a joke. Axel’s had a bad week. He got in the middle of the Ann Romney thing. Then said the country is going in the wrong direction. (Oops!) Now he’s swinging at us….”
Full report, here which details how the regime’s rogue DOJ is using LAWFARE to intimidate Gallup.
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They went after Gibson, America’s premier guitar company – so why not Gallup, one of the nation’s oldest polling companies, too..
The only two cents I’d add is that a real story — and one that should alarm people — is that this is what Obama thinks the Justice Department is for. Here is a guy who fought the Patriot Act, fought surveillance reform, has spoken admiringly of Ayer’s radical views of the criminal justice system, and has a record as a Chicago legislator of being soft on violent crime. He is evidently ambivalent about going after terrorists and hardened criminals, but he wants to mobilize the Justice Department post haste to suppress political speech that he doesn’t like.
I regard that as more than a little disconcerting from a guy who wants to be president, pick the next attorney-general, and make U.S. law enforcement policy.
We knew all this would happen. Some of us did, anyway.
Think what a second term would look like if God forbid, they’re given a second chance with no political restraints.
“The man is legislating by presidential fiat!” conservative author and radio show host Mark Levin said Friday. “This is unconstitutional.”
The order dictates that the Departments of Energy, Commerce, and Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Agency coordinate their actions to provide “policy and technical assistance” to states in order to ensure energy efficiency targets are being met.
Hmmm! Gotta say I like the timing of this - Mike Vanderboegh of SSI is calling it a “September Surprise”.
Rep Issa, the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee sent the letteron Friday to the Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz, summoning him to Capitol Hill to testify before a hearing on Sept. 11.
“Under normal circumstances, the Department has two weeks to complete this review, which would make its response due by September 4, 2012. It would be regrettable if senior Department officials applied political pressure on you to delay publication of this report. Given the considerable public interest in this case and the Attorney General’s own purported interest in learning the recommendations set forth in your report in order to make important management changes, it is incumbent upon you to release this report as soon as practicable.”
“We have been told through our sources for some time to be ready for a ‘September Surprise,’” Vanderboegh told his readers yesterday of this latest development. “The idea was to get the OIG report on the record and then, if it was a whitewash, to blow it out of the water with additional documents and witnesses already in the hands of the Issa committee.”
That makes Issa’s warning against delay all the more understandable, and further validates claims made over the weekend to this columnist by a past-proven source that there are “a lot of closed doors” at ATF Headquarters, as Acting Director B. Todd Jones, Deputy Director Thomas E. Brandon, the Chief Counsel’s office and relevant staffers are “poring” over a report said to be over 400 pages long.
It also renews hope that Issa and the Committee will be taking heed of unsolicited public counsel from this correspondent and Vanderboegh to demand the evidentiary work papers used as the basis for report findings, characterized by an adviser in government practices as “hot stuff, that’s for sure.”
The PJ Tatler has obtained documents from the Justice Department detailing efforts to recruit attorneys and staff who are dwarfs or who have “psychiatric disabilities” or “severe intellectual disabilities.” On May 31, 2012, Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez issued a directive to affirmatively recruit people with these “targeted disabilities.”
This DOJ policy does not merely involve prohibitions against discrimination, but rather the documents revealdeliberate recruitment efforts to hire as attorneys and staff for the Department of Justice people suffering from psychiatric disorders and intellectual disabilities. Moreover, applicants can “self-identify” their disability by means of the “Standard Form 256, Self Identification Disability.”
Can I ask an obvious question? Why would we be seeking out people with psychiatric and severe intellectual disabilities to work at the DOJ? To put them in lifetime career positions a succeeding administration can’t touch? (Not talking about dwarfs, here, obviously.)
In 1980, Fidel Castro rounded up “social undesirables”, including criminals, and mental patients and forced Cuban dissidents to take them on the mass boatlift to the US.
In 2012 Holder is rolling out the red carpet to “social undesirables” into out Dept. of Justice.
More depressing reading:
PJ Media’s full report on the attorneys hired for the Justice Department Civil Rights Division from 2009-2010 here in the Every Single Oneseries.
In what can only be described as a curious arrangement, a senior official at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a man who has been singled out as a top official involved in the gun-running scandal known as Fast and Furious, has been earning paid leave from the bureau while simultaneously drawing an additional six figure salary with a major financial services company.
Bill McMahon was one of five officials named in an indictment that charged him with extensive involvement in the leadership failures of Operation Fast and Furious. The indictment specifically accused McMahon of giving false Congressional testimony. An additional report indicated that McMahon knew there were no safeguards in place to prevent a large number of guns from getting across the border, but he still made no effort to stop it.
Now however, two Republican lawmakers are demanding answers as to how McMahon can remain on paid leave while earning another six-figure salary working full time for the investment bank J.P. Morgan. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) have penned a letter to the Department of Justice asking how such an arrangement could be approved.
By “curious” I think what Rusty meant was “thoroughly corrupt”.
