That’s what Darrel Issa reportedly just dropped into the Congressional Record. I wonder how much else he has? I’ll bet that the DOJ and White House (not to mention Elijah Cummings) do, too.
And meanwhile, what would you do after making history as the first cabinet member to be found in contempt of Congress? Eric Holder went to Disney World.
Yes, really. I’ll leave the obvious jokes to the commenters.
[Update a while later]
Well this is a shocking development. The Department of Justice isn’t going to prosecute its head.
[Update a while later]
The Roll Call story got Drudged, so it’s overloaded, but here’s another report from the Washington Times.
Neither link is working. Rollcall just won’t load and the AP stroy seems to be a dynamic link that’s expired. đ
Oh, Drudge headlined “Secret Wiretaps Rock DOJ” with a link to Rollcall, and yesterday was the 2nd largest day in Drudge history with 45 million views. I’d say Rollcall is buried for a while.
I read the Roll Call story; they’re not wire taps, they’re wire tap applications. I’m guessing they reveal someone knew something at a point in time early enough to indicate lying to congress.
Issa has admitted that he has no evidence, or even suspicion, that Holder knew about F&F. The “Holder got Terry killed” conspiracy theory is dead. This “bigger-than-Watergate” scandal is collapsing into a petty inter-branch document tug-of-war, in which the documents aren’t even about F&F.
Since when does a President invoke executive privilege over a petty inter-branch document tug-of-war?
With all due respect (i.e., not much), that is insane.
I think Jim must have read the Bizarro-World report by mistake because it is pretty much the exact opposite of the real world one.
Okay, I finally saw part of the Hill story.
Jim, the wiretap applications show that all the top DOJ officials knew the details of the program, and that the policy was to give guns to the drug cartels and let them murder people with the guns. For the tracing to work, the murders were a required, and the wiretap applications show that the the people at the top signed off on it as US policy.
That’s what I got out of it as well. However, today’s story is only news because Issa decided to read it into the Congressional record. Congress had the wiretap applications for a couple of weeks now, and its likely what convinced many to vote for holding Holder in contempt of Congress. Because unlike Jim’s insane statement, the applications are evidence showing that people just below Holder (that Holder is not holding accountable and claims also they weren’t aware) were completely aware of the events related to F&F. Those people aware of this illegal sell of arms to criminals across international borders need to be held accountable for this crime. Holder and now Obama refuse to hold these civil servants accountable to the law.
the wiretap applications show that all the top DOJ officials knew the details of the program
Hardly. All it shows is that there was paperwork in the DOJ with incidental clues to the existence of gun walking. That application was reviewed by DOJ to make sure there was probable cause for a wiretap, not to audit the branch offices for their adherence to unrelated DOJ policies. You are acting as if the DOJ’s top priority in 2010 was using other departmental paperwork to ferret out ill-advised and unauthorized sting operations cooked up in the branch offices. But that’s nonsense — they weren’t focused on uncovering F&F because they had no idea it existed!
What color is the sky on that planet of yours, Jim?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizarro_World
because they had no idea it existed!
Thx for the bang at the end Jim. Perfect.
You are acting as if the DOJâs top priority in 2010 was using other departmental paperwork to ferret out ill-advised and unauthorized sting operations cooked up in the branch offices.
So Jim is acting like the DOJ has a wiretap process that actually is just a rubber stamp. No real review of the reason for the application and its compliance with the law. Senior DOJ leaders just sign the paperwork and move… Forward.
This is interesting Jim, tell us more how our appointed government officials don’t actually do their job. I’m thinking Congress has even more reason to investigate Jim’s claim.
What was that chant the left always uses???
“He lied. People died.”
It’s never been more true. Holder has retracted some of his lying statements. I guess that means he never lied???
My only concern is that they drop all charges after these goons are out of office.
They keep calling it a witch hunt. It’s way past time to burn ’em.
I just hope they don’t throw it all away after the coming landslide.
Jim,
I am afraid you are wasting your time. These folks have bought the Tea Party story hook, line and sinker. The next thing you know they will be demanding that Congress force the President Obama to release the information on Dulce that the government is keeping secret.
Yes, time to play the Twightlight Zone theme as the background music to Rand’s website đ
Where can I get this tea party story book? I’d like to buy it.
F&F by itself should be enough to put this entire administration in jail. A Mexican jail. Lying to congress is a felony; even if you walk it back. The problem is that the people that would bring it to trial are… Really, amazing how you love government.
Oh, by the way Jim, at the beginning of a generic episode of Columbo, Columbo admits that he has no evidence, or even suspicion. That’s why he investigates, and by the end of the episode someone is carted off to jail.
So when you say “Issa has admitted“, past tense, it doesn’t mean much. For example, today’s wiretap application dump gives Issa clear grounds for suspecting that Holder knew everything. Heck, he may even have Holder’s signatures on some of the applications.
at the beginning of a generic episode of Columbo
I love this comment. Judging by the breathless way you guys follow this story, treating every trivial morsel as a new “bombshell”, you must really think this is an episode of a cop show, where the good cop is going to dramatically nab the crook before the credits roll.
I hate to be the one to tell you that Columbo was fiction. It was dramatic because it was written to be dramatic.
[And by the way, if you like true-life dramatic stories, did you hear the one about the small businessman who conveniently upped his fire insurance and moved his inventory and records out of his warehouse right before it burned down? A guy by the name of Issa….]
For example, todayâs wiretap application dump gives Issa clear grounds for suspecting that Holder knew everything.
Issa has had the wiretap applications (and no evidence that Holder ever saw them) for weeks or months. He said on Wednesday that he has no suspicion that Holder knew anything about F&F. Try again, Columbo.
And yet Congress has voted Holder in contempt, the first time that has been done to an Attorney General in United States history. That didn’t happen in Watergate, Iran Contra, or any previous scandal.
And in case you’re not following along, Issa had this evidence from wire-tap applications, not from all the internal documents that Congress demands that the DOJ to provide. The wire-tap applilcations were signed by all of Holder’s top officials, and the applications also clearly violate several federal laws that apply to government officials, one of which carries a 20-year prison sentence and $1 million dollar fine for each infraction, and another of which carries a 30 year prison sentence and $5 million dollar fine.
Exactly.
There’s a reason the chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorneyâs Office in Arizona plead the Fifth.
And it wasn’t just because Issa is a meany.
Congress has voted Holder in contempt
Ever since Obama was elected the Fox/talk radio/blog echo chamber has talked up one phony scandal after another: the New Black Panthers, the $200M/day trip to India, stimulus money going to non-existent zip codes, etc. Remember Issa calling this the most corrupt administration in history? None of it has panned out, but after so much build-up the GOP is like the kid in the joke on Christmas morning, sure that somewhere in all the manure there must be a pony.
That didnât happen in Watergate, Iran Contra, or any previous scandal.
Which is a clue that this isn’t at all like those scandals. Those scandals involved actual crimes, criminal investigations, and prosecutions. This one is political theater.
the applications also clearly violate several federal laws
How, exactly, do the applications violate federal laws?
For extra credit, did the agents running Wide Receiver ever apply for a wiretap? Does that mean that Bush’s AG knew about Wide Receiver, and should be held criminally responsible?
For extra credit, did the agents running Wide Receiver ever apply for a wiretap?
I assume so.
Does that mean that Bushâs AG knew about Wide Receiver,
It isn’t required that their wiretaps go all the way to the AG. So a Deputy AG is sufficient. And, yes, one of Bush’s Deputy AGs knew about Wide Receiver.
This is also where the “Issa doesn’t -assume- Holder knew” line comes from. It could be a Deputy AG, but -somebody- on a very short list had to know. A lot of the pre-this-week questioning was focused on trying to figure out whose signature authorized this.
and should be held criminally responsible?
Absolutely. For every single crime they committed. In triplicate as government officials.
But the basic plan of Wide Receiver was to track the hell out of the any guns. It was stopped (in 2007) when the RFID chips were discovered and the possibility of “escaped guns” showed up.
But Fast and Furious was fundamentally different in some respects from Wide Receiver.
Even without discussing -motivations-. Or the plan stated in the wiretaps applications.
The “just the known facts” aspects are troubling too.
1) No RFID chipping.
2) Minimal ground tracking. We can argue this one, but the whistleblowers and the five F&F ATF guys in Fortune basically have the same tune here: “We tried, no one would let us do a decent job on this!”
3) No use of aerial assets.
4) No informing the Mexican authorities before, during, or after the guns cross the border.
If -I- am going after the Bush Deputy AG, the best I can come up with is something like ‘criminal negligence’, or perhaps a ‘third degree homicide’. That is, if someone died from one of the guns. And his defense would basically be, “We thought we had a fine plan, and we did manage to arrest 1400 people.”
But the entire -plan- under F&F is more like Murder 2 “callous disregard for human life” here.
And that’s -ignoring- the purported quotes of -planning- “to find the guns ditched at murder scenes”.
Wide receiver was about catching bad guys using a few tagged guns. F&F was all about killing innocent people to move an agenda forward.
I don’t like the idea of wide receiver either. But to compare the two is insane.
To defend F&F means you should be sharing that Mexican jail cell because supporting their illegal and immoral activity gives them the cover to do it in the first place. I’d like to say you’re sick, but that implies a potential cure.
Yeah, all that plus he’s, you know, black.
I don’t give a crap if he’s orange with blue polka dots. Fast and Furious was an act of war against Mexico.
So what are the races of the ATF people involved? Is it a racial thing that is preventing Holder from prosecuting them? As Ed says, I don’t give a crap what their race is, these lawless people need to be held accountable.
Issa has admitted that he has no evidence, or even suspicion, that Holder knew about F&F.
That was then. Now has changed.
The âHolder got Terry killedâ conspiracy theory is dead.
On what basis? That you’re tired of hearing about it?
This âbigger-than-Watergateâ scandal is collapsing into a petty inter-branch document tug-of-war, in which the documents arenât even about F&F.
Except that’s not what is actually happening. The people who were involved in Fast and Furious have been recalled to Washington and are protected by Holder. The Obama administration has refused to release documents on who decided what. And we now know that Holder has lied in the past to Congress about what he knew about the program.
Here’s my take. This is going to get worse because that hidden information will still get out. The crime still happened. Several hundred people died with guns from this program present at the scene, including the death of at least one US law enforcement officer. That’s a lot of charges of accessory to murder.
And let’s consider your argument. You boast that there’s not enough evidence to convict Holder. The hand of the US is in several hundred murders and the only thing that you can think is that your boy can’t be blamed. Even though he is actively obstructing justice right now (which incidentally is a federal level felony on its own) and failing to do his job. Don’t you realize not just how foolish or dumb your position is, but also how evil it is?
A vast crime happened and the normal organs of justice at the federal level in the US are stalled because the guy in charge is likely guilty of assisting in those crimes and protecting himself. When are we going to get justice? When are these several hundred victims going to get a portion of it?
My prediction is that this is the tip of the iceberg. More information will be revealed and eventually, a number of Department of Justice officials will be going to jail, barring a presidential pardon. Whether Holder actually knew enough or was involved enough to go to jail is unknown, but he is committing other crimes right now in preventing this from being investigated.
That was then. Now has changed.
What, exactly, has changed since Wednesday? Issa’s had the wiretap applications for weeks.
You’re going to have to provide evidence for your claim then, Jim.
Guys, Holder is black. Have you still not figured it out? People like our Jim here are running the show now and they will never permit any consequences for AG Holder for the same reason they will never permit any for the President. He is black. He is sacrosanct because he is black. A black man in America can do no wrong in their eyes. Lie, cheat, steal, rape, rob, ruin, run rampant, riot — it doesn’t matter because he is black black black black blackety black black BLACK, so shut up and go pay your taxes.
And I don’t think Jim gives a crap what color he is either.
A white AG would be in jail tonight.
And you all know it.
A republican or conservative AG who engaged in this kind of coverup and perhaps more would be in jail. A democrat AG working for a nakedly corrupt leftist, possibly with dirt on his boss, takes more to bring to account.
Keep telling yourself that.
And vote for the “conservative” candidate in November. Because, you know, that’s going to change everything.
What conservative?
On what charge?
Contempt of Congress – whether he’s white, black, or orange with blue polka dots.
Ace points out the other key part about the wiretap applications that is reported by The Hill:
The tactic, which was intended to allow agents to track criminal networks by finding the guns at crime scenes, was condemned after two guns that were part of the operation were found at U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terryâs murder scene.
So the BATF’s intent was to track the weapons after they had been used in the commission of a crime [in Mexico]. Only after they were used to kill Brian Terry, did someone decide the idea was bad, and meerly condemned the tactic. The people who implemented the tactic? The DOJ is uninterested in condemning them. If a private citizen did this, they would be on trial their role in the murder of Brian Terry, and likely facing extradition to Mexico for their role in the multiple murders in that country.
Well, it is like trying to map out domestic Al Qaeda activity by giving one of their members a couple hundred Stinger surface-to-air missiles and then pushing pins in a map to mark the locations of all the downed airliners.
If Bush and Cheney had done that, though, some Democrats on the far-far left would possibly have accused them of trying to panic people into thinking that Al Qaeda is a threat. It’s a stretch, I admit, but some leftists would think that.
A stretch? I haven’t forgotten the claims that Bush order the destruction of the WTC in order to go to war. It didn’t matter that thousands (millions if you include tv audiences) saw the planes crash into the buildings. The truthers continued to make the claim until Bush left office.
Now, we have the documents saying BATF had the intent to support firearms crossing an international border, so they could be tracked after the commission of a crime. But in Jim’s mind, the Mexicans would have just died anyway, so he doesn’t care if the Obama administration arms the criminals that kill them.
You do know that gun walking happened under Bush too, don’t you? You don’t have to wonder what would happen if a Republican did something like this, one did.
Except that when it occurred under Bush, it was coordinated with Mexican officials, weapons were tagged with RFID, and every attempt was made to track to them across the border to learn the routes of entry in an attempt to shutdown those routes. Personally, I think it was a foolish idea, since RFID are rather easy to block, and such happened and the weapons were lost. We know all this because this information was shared in a transparent manner. We also know how high up the coordination of this effort went, and it didn’t go to the President.
So since you are for transparency Jim, why not shine the same light on Obama’s version of gun walker as you want to do with Bush’s?
Wide Receiver:
Tagged via RFID, followed (both tight and loose) on the ground, followed in the air via both helicopters and planes, called ahead to Mexican authorities, handed off to the Mexican authorities at the border, and led to 1400 arrests and zero known deaths from the 400 guns involved. The program was cancelled in 2007 when the RFID chips were discovered as ‘too risky to continue’.
Nothing like this happened under Bush. That particular lie floated by the Left was refuted a long time ago, though Leland and Al here do a good job explaining it again. However, the Left loves to keep repeating lies, in the hopes of giving them a superficial appearance of truth.
You do know that gun walking happened under Bush too, donât you? You donât have to wonder what would happen if a Republican did something like this, one did.
Jim, why do you still conflate these two programs even though they had obvious differences? Wide Receiver tried to track the weapons. Fast and Furious managers prevented their agents from doing so. Wide Receiver involved Mexican law enforcement. Fast and Furious kept Mexican law enforcement in the dark. Wide Receiver and another Arizona based program sold something like 650 weapons (450 for Wide Receiver and 200 for the other according to Wikipedia) of which roughly two thirds made their way to Mexico. These programs were suspended. Fast and Furious was only suspended when a “walked” gun found its way to a crime scene involving the murder of a federal law enforcement officer. Fast and Furious was also bigger with two thousand guns making their way to Mexico and about two thirds still unaccounted for today.
As to crime scenes, it’s worth noting that these guns have turned up at several hundred crime scenes, which among other things, involved several hundred murders. That’s another huge difference between Fast and Furious and Wide Receiver.
Finally, (this is a huge point worth remembering, Jim) it’s worth remembering that Wide Receiver happened and ended before Fast and Furious even started. Wide Receiver was the first time this particular strategy had been attempted with respect to the Mexican drug war. By the time of Fast and Furious, the ATF had copious evidence that the gun-walking strategy didn’t work for catching criminals. Yet they greatly increased the size and scope of Fast and Furious, eliminated the safe guards that had been in place, and refused to monitor the weapons (the only way to actually catch criminals, right?) except when they turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and the US.
In summary, your insistence, that Bush did it too, ignores that the Fast and Furious program has a number of features that indicate it was vastly less responsible, at the least, than the corresponding Bush program. We need to remember also, that the gun-walking strategy is actually fairly old. Offer to sell illegal goods and arrest those who buy them. Probably every president since FDR has seen one of these sting operations in action. But I doubt there is another such which has the goods turn up (and used) at crime scenes involving several hundred murders.
Arguing with people who don’t care about the truth is useless. For some people, it is more important to protect the home team than to investigate possible crimes by that same home team. What is the point of even replying to Jim? On this issue, he is just a troll. Doesn’t care about uncovering the truth. He can’t ask himself the question why Holder is covering up, and why Obama is using executive privilege. Maybe in real life he knows his home boys did bad things, but he just doesn’t care.
What are the deaths of a few hundred poor brown people to a guy like Jim? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I wonder how he felt about Bush’s bombing of Iraq? Did he complain? Then, how about the 8 years of the Clinton presidency, when we bombed Iraq the whole time? Was that the same, or different? Poor brown people dying, in both cases. I am guessing that for a guy like Jim, it was bad for Bush and no problem for Clinton, just as it is no problem with F&F with Obama.