Posted on 07/10/2011 6:04:09 PM PDT by marktwain
Gunwalker: Holder’s resignation is almost inevitable
And the only way that doesn’t happen is if he is fool-enough to stay in office, Obama is fool-enough not to fire him, and Congress has no choice but to remove him from office.
Consider: On the 4th of July, a national holiday, acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives gave testimony to House and Senate investigators on Operation “Fast and Furious,” aka “Gunwalker.”
Without telling his bosses.
And bringing his own lawyer, not the Bureau’s and not the Department of Justice’s.
To quote Allahpundit — Dude!
This morning, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Charles Grassley released a copy of a letter (PDF) they sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on July 5 about Melson’s testimony. Melson’s revelations raise even more serious issues not only about the operation itself, but about apparent attempts by the Justice Department to mislead Congress on the details of the operation.
Contrary to the Justice Department’s denials, according to Melson, ATF agents specifically witnessed transfers of weapons from straw purchasers to third parties without taking any further action. Melson claimed that it was not until the public disclosure of the operation that he personally reviewed the “hundreds of documents” related to the case. He said he became “sick to his stomach” when he learned the full story. Even more shocking is that some of the “gun trafficking ‘higher-ups’ that the ATF sought to identify were already known to other agencies and may even have been paid as informants” by agencies such as the FBI and the DEA.
Melson provided detailed information and documents to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General at the Justice Department. But that information was not given to Congress by then-Acting Deputy Attorney General James Cole. In fact, “Melson was not allowed to communicate to Congress” and “Justice Department officials directed [ATF’s senior leadership] not to respond and took full control of replying to briefing and document requests from Congress.” According to the letter Issa and Grassley sent to Holder, it was “two days after [Melson] told [Cole] about serious issues involving lack of information sharing” that the Wall Street Journal suddenly reported that Melson was about to be ousted by the Obama administration.
Emphasis added. The Deputy Attorney General is the Attorney General’s chief assistant — the department’s number two. Here is how his authority is described by the DoJ:
The Deputy Attorney General advises and assists the Attorney General in formulating and implementing Departmental policies and programs and in providing overall supervision and direction to all organizational units of the Department. The Deputy Attorney General is authorized to exercise all the power and authority of the Attorney General, except where such power or authority is prohibited by law from delegation or has been delegated to another official. In the absence of the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General acts as the Attorney General.
Think about this: Melson, head of the BATF, gave Cole, Holder’s chief deputy, “detailed information and documents,” after Melson had seen enough to make him sick. And instead of letting himself be set up as the fall-guy, he got his own lawyer –a former US Attorney– rather than let government lawyers “represent” him. Gee, I wonder why he’d feel that need?
But wait, there’s more!
In a related article, Bob Owens quotes an email from the Phoenix BATF office referencing an inter-agency meeting that shows how widespread knowledge of Gunwalker was:
The October 27, 2009 email from ATF Phoenix Field Division Special Agent in Charge (SAC) William Newell regarded a Southwest Border Strategy Group meeting that focused on Fast and Furious. It contained a laundry list of high ranking Justice Department officials that attended the meeting, including:
* Assistant Attorney General (Criminal Division) Lanny Breuer,
* Kenneth Melson, Acting Director, ATF
* William Hoover, Acting Deputy Director, ATF
* Michele Leonhart, Administrator, DEA
* Robert Mueller, Director FBI
Four other Justice Department directors or their representatives came from the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), Bureau of Prisons (BOP), U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), and the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA). The chair of the Attorney Generals Advisory Committee (AGAC) also attended the session. Their names were redacted in the released document. U.S. attorneys for all four southwest border states also attended.
With all this legal and bureaucratic firepower in one room being briefed on Gunwalker, there is absolutely no way Attorney General Eric Holder did not know what was going on, which may make the DoJ’s actions in response to requests for information from Issa’s committee Obstruction, a felony. And interference with Melson’s testimony may also be Tampering, under Title 18, Section 1512 of the US Code. (See subsections (b) and (c).)
This is why I say Eric Holder is a “Dead Bureaucrat Walking.” There is too much to indicate he is either monumentally detached from his supervisory responsibilities and thus incompetent, or (more likely) knew all along about an operation that let thousands of firearms be sold to straw buyers who were acting as cutouts for the Mexican drug cartels, in order to trace a putative “gunrunning network.” An operation that has cost at least 150 Mexican lives (1) and the lives of two US federal officers.
And thus my strong guess is that he will resign to protect President Obama, rather than be impeached and to try to head off an independent prosecutor, because I find it very hard to believe the President didn’t know, either.
LINKS: More from Moe Lane and Power Line. “El Mamito” says the Zetas buy all their weapons in the US. Given what we’re learning about Gunwalker, perhaps that should be “from the US.”
Footnotes: (1) It’s no wonder the Mexicans are talking about extradition; I’d be screaming mad, too.
Jail that SUCKER!
“Almost” is a key word.
resignation or not, he needs to be in prison and he needs to testify against Obama too.
Holder deserves a tougher sentence that than.
It’s the suspense that’s killing me.
This sure makes it clear that O and the Gang are not going to be able to stonewall this or wait it out in the hope that it will dry up and blow away.
Now it’s Holder’s turn to decide whether or not to fall on his sword, turn rat or worst (best?) of all, try and brazen it out.
Is he as fanatical a true believer as he has so far appeared to be?
Sadly, this guy will neither see resignation nor jail . . . state-run, lame-stream media will protect his ebony ass.
If it wasn't before, it is now.
I think he is a fanatical true believer but liberals don’t have ethics
Holder is the fall guy; Obama is the real perp.
They are just murdering people that the US Congress
has wanted murdered, as it has allowed a lawless,
undocumented (except by perjury and fraud) administration
to destroy America and its justice system.
I’m really getting confused. I was listening to talk radio last week, don’t remember who, and it was stated that Gunwalker and Fast & Furious are two separate operations.
Gunwalker was started during Bush’s admin and closely monitored. Fast & Furious was begun shortly after Obama’s inauguration and is solely owned by this admin.
Yet I see articles all over that talk about the two as tho they’re one and the same. Can somebody straighten this out for me?
“Think about this: Melson, head of the BATF, gave Cole, Holder’s chief deputy, “detailed information and documents,” after Melson had seen enough to make him sick. And instead of letting himself be set up as the fall-guy, he got his own lawyer –a former US Attorney– rather than let government lawyers “represent” him. Gee, I wonder why he’d feel that need?”
Gunwalker is the generic term for the overall scandal. Fast and Furious and other programs are part of the scandal, but not all of it.
"Gunrunner" started under President Bush, and was essentially an intense inspection of all the Federal Firearms Licensees in the border states. It is likely that there were some straw purchasers that were arrested this way.
Gunrunner was mostly a bust, though, because there simply wasn't any "Iron River of Guns" flowing into Mexico. Gunrunner made relatively few arrests and was condemned in an audit as being ineffective.
As I recall, the average age of a gun traced from Mexico was about 14 years. This is consistent with the understanding that most of the guns going to Mexico are single items, bought from individuals by brothers or uncles, or fathers, and sent back to Mexico in backpacks or trunks to relatives for their own defense.
At least, that appears to be the case before the ATF actively encouraged straw buyers to buy large numbers of new semi-auto rifles and handguns in bulk, some of them, it appears, with U.S. government money. All that "gunwalking" occurred under the Obama administration with the "fast and furious" program, "castaway", and any other similar programs that have not yet been uncovered. We know that "gunwalking" was encouraged at a couple of gun stores in Texas, that don't fall under the jurisdiction of either "fast and furious" or "castaway".
Gunwalker: Holder’s resignation is almost inevitable
. . . . Check out article.
.
“...First comes resignation the incarceration...”
And on the evening of January 19, 2013 he will be pardoned by the Kenyan usurper.
That is, unless, the usurper is not himself in prison.
I believe the mixing is intentional. Libs always blend in a major scandal by them with much lesser screwed up operations to lessen the impact. "Well, others were doing it too.", etc.
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