1818 replies to this topic

[Tom Ray]

Getting back on topic, the lawsuit over Obama's assertion of executive privilege to keep Fast and Furious documents from Congress is undergoing court-ordered mediation to try to reach a settlement.

The representatives from Congress believe it is likely to be fruitless since there is no indication that the stonewallers in the administration have changed their minds about the legitimacy of Congressional oversight.

The Oversight panel, led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), argued that mediation with a separate federal judge would be futile because of the distance between the two sides.

“He is not motivated to compromise in a manner that will result in the delivery of useful documents to the committee in the foreseeable future [and] ... settlement simply is not possible — at least not at this time,” the committee wrote about Holder in the latest joint status report. “Further efforts along these lines would be a waste of everyone’s time.”

Assuming mediation fails, there will be a trial starting April 24th.

Congress and the White House have both won previous court battles in the past over the assertion of executive privilege. But according to legal scholars and former DOJ attorneys, the current case is unlike any other, leaving many with a theory on how it will play out but few with any firm conviction. Few, except for Issa himself.

“The committee is confident about the legal merit of its efforts to obtain documents President Obama and the Justice Department have wrongly withheld,” said Frederick Hill, a spokesman for Issa and the panel’s Republicans, in a statement. “The committee intends to fully pursue its legal options.”

Scott Coffina, a former associate counsel to Bush and current partner with D.C. firm Drinker, Biddle & Reath, said the case is extremely important because it could set a new precedent for what information Congress has a right to access.

“There’s a very important prerogative from both branches at stake in a decision like this: the assertion of executive privilege in future cases and Congress’s right to insist on getting full, complete, and accurate information when they’re conducting investigations,” said Coffina.

...

Further muddying the waters are comments Holder made in a recent interview with ABC News, which the committee refers to in its joint status report. Holder said he didn’t have respect for the lawmakers who voted to place him in contempt of Congress last year.
Issa has called the comments “arrogantly dismissive,” and Grassley, who did not vote on the House contempt measure, has called for an apology.

Holder and DOJ say they are optimistic that a deal can be reached through mediation.

[Tom Ray]

The Department of Fatherland Security IG report on ICE involvement in Fast and Furious came out.

...According to the report, on numerous occasions ICE and Border Patrol agents stopped vehicles smuggling guns to Mexico, but were instructed by the ATF and U.S. attorney's office to back off. Even after "suspects admitted to having transported weapons across the border five or six times," they were not arrested, and ATF did not "try to flip the suspects to get them to cooperate, which was a mistake," the report said.

...

Early in the case -- after learning the ATF let more than 200 guns get smuggled to Mexico despite a warning the buyers were dirty from Lone Wolf gun store owner Andre Howard -- a senior ICE agent said in an email, "I'm speechless. Even the owner knows this ain't right, and ATF apparently doesn't get it."

Following the death of Agent Brian Terry, another supervisor wrote, "and this is exactly what I said would happen when you let that many guns walk."

Yet the debate apparently stayed within Arizona.

"Senior DHS officials in Washington DC had no awareness of the methodology used by the task force to investigate Operation Fast and Furious until media reports were published in March 2011," the report said.

The report also claimed that days after the death of Terry, former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke, who oversaw Fast and Furious and later resigned because of his role in it, declined to tell Napolitano about the case, even as she called for an investigation into it.

Robert Heyer, a spokesman for the Terry family, said no one from the OIG ever contacted the family and criticized the report for failing to hold anyone accountable.

"We are very disappointed with the quality and depth of the investigation," Heyer told Fox News. "The report says that Homeland Security personnel in Arizona all knew on December 15th that the weapons found at the murder scene were from (Fast and Furious). That information was passed to (headquarters), yet was never passed on to Secretary Napolitano," he said. "(Allen) had the opportunity to shut down the operation because of public safety concerns but he chose not to. How about holding DHS executives accountable for that decision."

The OIG has not responded to a question from Fox News on why the report did not include names.

Naming names would seem to be a first step in holding those responsible accountable. I guess that's not the goal.

[Mark K]

Who forced a contempt vote through Congress just a short time before the IG report came out? Who allowed no debate and only 7 days notice on a complex case before that vote? Who threatened to change the NRA ratings of members of Congress unless they voted to find Holder in contempt?

[Tom Ray]

Who finally went for a contempt vote after months of stonewalling and threatening a contempt vote in response? The Reform and Oversight committee. We know the names.

Only seven days? There were months of negotiations and threats of contempt if the stonewalling did not stop. It got to the point where I was comparing Issa to the boy who cried wolf in this thread. It's not like there was no warning. There were too many warnings for too long. By named people.

Only the NRA can say what they will do, and they did. They are free to issue ratings and members of Congress are free to react. I support their action because I was tired of the stonewalling and thought the administration should come clean. Again, names were attached.

So getting back to my question, why would the DHS IG not name names in his report?

Another article on the subject

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas) and Ranking Democrat Bennie Thompson (Miss.) said the report was “troubling.”

"This report once again demonstrates the obvious flaws in the Fast and Furious Operation,” said McCaul. “While it makes clear that the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement leadership were initially unaware of the operation, it is troubling that those ICE and DHS personnel in Arizona who knew of the problems did not take immediate action.”

Thompson said, “The OIG’s conclusions about the lack of support or oversight by ICE leadership in Arizona of the ICE special agent involved in the operation are very troubling, as is the failure of ICE leadership in Arizona to report serious problems with the operation to ICE headquarters.”

I agree with Bennie Thompson and would like to know who these "ICE leadership" people are and see them held accountable. But first, we need to know who they are. Why would that be a secret?

[Tom Ray]

If there is a case being built against Voth, which I believe is very likely and you believe will never happen, then the complete lack of his being mentioned in Issa's political hearings is very much to be expected and understandable....

Well, it has been a bit over a year. I wonder how that case against Voth is coming?

[Mark K]

If there is a case being built against Voth, which I believe is very likely and you believe will never happen, then the complete lack of his being mentioned in Issa's political hearings is very much to be expected and understandable....

Well, it has been a bit over a year. I wonder how that case against Voth is coming?

Looking more and more like it died. Not every case results in charges being filed. Your mom was a prosecutor, right?

[Tom Ray]

Gee, who could have possibly guessed that gunwalkers and the stonewallers who protected them would not be punished?

Besides me, I mean.

[Mark K]

Gee, who could have possibly guessed that gunwalkers and the stonewallers who protected them would not be punished?

Besides me, I mean.

Some people thought very little would happen because it was just a bad sting op.

[Tom Ray]

Why would it be very likely we would see an ATF supervisor prosecuted over a bad sting op?

[Mark K]

Why would it be very likely we would see an ATF supervisor prosecuted over a bad sting op?

Seems to me that's a point you agree with. What are your reasons?

I suspect the main thing that's saving Voth's dumb ass is that the department had run similar ops before, specifically to Mexico.

[Tom Ray]

Why would it be very likely we would see an ATF supervisor prosecuted over a bad sting op?

Seems to me that's a point you agree with. What are your reasons?

I suspect the main thing that's saving Voth's dumb ass is that the department had run similar ops before, specifically to Mexico.

No, you were the one who wrote that it was very likely he would be prosecuted and I disagreed. Still do.

There was one similar op, but Weinstein, who knew about it, somehow failed to make the connection you just made. He told the IG that he did not believe the whistleblower allegations of gunwalking because it was so aberrant it could not be believed.

[Mark K]

Why would it be very likely we would see an ATF supervisor prosecuted over a bad sting op?

Seems to me that's a point you agree with. What are your reasons?

I suspect the main thing that's saving Voth's dumb ass is that the department had run similar ops before, specifically to Mexico.

No, you were the one who wrote that it was very likely he would be prosecuted and I disagreed. Still do.

There was one similar op, but Weinstein, who knew about it, somehow failed to make the connection you just made. He told the IG that he did not believe the whistleblower allegations of gunwalking because it was so aberrant it could not be believed.

I wrote that it was likely there was a case, actually. The full context of that statement being it's the most likely reason for Issa's curious lack of interest in him. You edited that part out when you went and dug up that sentence, remember?

[Tom Ray]

A case for prosecution?

[Tom Ray]

(Now that it has been through the spin cycle in sympathetic media outlets) the DHS OIG report has been released to the public.

[Tom Ray]

The DHS OIG concluded that senior officials only learned about Fast and Furious when the media began reporting on it in March...

Except media reports appeared before March.

On February 1, the Gun Rights Examiner column documented that the press was beginning to react to a barrage of exposes and pleas from this column and the Sipsey Street Irregulars blog, to the point where reports had been filed by Politico, The Arizona Republic and the Associated Press, with its report appearing in Newsday, The Los Angeles Times, CBS News and numerous other outlets.

“Former DEA chief says 3 other federal agencies knew about Operation Fast and Furious,” William La Jeunesse of Fox News wrote in another report on February 10, documenting FBI and ICE involvement.

"BREAKING: CBS to report tonight on 'Project Gunwalker'," this column reported on February 23, announcing the first "Gunwalker" report by Sharyl Attkisson.

Interested officials weren't aware of that? Really?

“He put service before self, which is a mark of heroism,” DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano proclaimed at slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s funeral the preceding December. “We resolve, I resolve, to pursue swift justice for those responsible for his death.”

Less than a week before, per the OIG report, she’d “visited OBP Arizona offices … to support the OBP staff and to assert to the USAO and to the FBI that DHS wanted an aggressive investigation and prosecution. Tellingly, the report documents “U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke traveled with her from Phoenix to the offices she visited and attended the meetings with OBP personnel. However, Burke and others did not inform her about the connection between the weapons recovered at the scene of the murder and the OCDETF operation. They did not mention Operation Fast and Furious.”

Didn’t they? Burke used to be her DHS Senior Advisor, and before that was her Chief of Staff when she was Arizona governor. He’s the guy who ended up resigning over his involvement in Fast and Furious, involvement that included leaking secret records about whistleblower John Dodson. He wouldn't be spilling his guts to make sure they were both covered?

The OIG was also unable to interview relevant participants and witnesses...

And, as with the DOJ OIG report, there were plenty of avenues closed off to the DHS auditors.

“We were not able to interview the ICE Chief of Staff, who left DHS employment during the course of our review,” the report admits.

...

As for tracking down other details, the audit also reveals gaps in what they could investigate, such as “We do not have access to those ATF ROIs [Reports of Investigation] and can only review the special agent’s 33 ROIs to understand his activities on the operation,” and “We were unable to interview the ASAC, who has since retired and declined a voluntary interview with us.”

Compare that to similar refusals noted in the DOJ OIG report, relevantly including the footnote stating “The ICE agent who was assigned to ATF’s Group VII declined our request for a voluntary interview.”

Congress' Oversight Committee has yet to react.

There’s still nothing on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s “Releases” page acknowledging this latest report or giving any indication if DHS OIG Charles K. Edwards will be summoned to answer questions. If Darrell Issa does schedule such a hearing, he should also issue subpoenas to the reluctant government employees who declined to voluntarily cooperate -- if they then elect to exercise their right to clam up (and it won’t be the first time a Fast and Furious-implicated catch has wiggled off that hook), it will be interesting to see what the chairman’s next move is -- if he has one.

It seems to me that the OIG should have the power and inclination to issue subpoenas rather than relying on voluntary cooperation from those involved in wrongdoing. "Oh, I left that job" is really not an answer. I hope Congress uses their power to compel testimony from these former officials. Let them assert their fifth amendment rights if needed, as they have before, and we can at least draw from that the conclusion that they are concerned about incriminating themselves if they answer questions about what they did while in our employ.

[Tom Ray]

...
Both the unaccounted-for numbers of weapons, and the access to the weapons are out of control without accountability from all the fine gun-owning citizenry....

I agree. The most of the guns that the ATF told dealers to sell in Fast and Furious are still unaccounted for and the people who are responsible have not been held accountable for their actions.

[tuk tuk joe]

Tom, wait twenty years (at least) to find out what happened,... or are you so fucking stupid that you actually expect accountability??? As I'm sure you know very well that's just not the way "democracy" works...

[Tom Ray]

The way things work: we have three branches of government.

 

Judge Amy Berman Jackson sharply challenged the department's claim that federal courts have no jurisdiction in the dispute. Department lawyer Ian Gershengorn said the battle over the documents should be resolved by the checks and balances between the legislative and executive branches.

 

"I'm a check and balance," countered Jackson, an appointee of President Barack Obama. "The third branch exists."

[Tom Ray]

New book by Operation Wide Receiver confidential informant coming out.

 

“Operation Wide Receiver,” a precursor to “Operation Fast and Furious” wherein U.S. guns were bought by straw purchasers and “walked” under the noses of ATF investigators into Mexico, has been the subject of numerous Gun Rights Examiner reports. The central figure in those reports was Mike Detty, a gun writer, a firearms dealer, and the confidential informant who literally risked his life over the course of years to do what he believed was right, only to find the obvious criminals weren’t the only ones he couldn’t trust.