"Victory"? It will be "victory" when Obama and Holder are both eating jail food.
I'm not holding my breath.
Posted on 08/31/2011 12:42:55 PM PDT by Libloather
Rep. Issa gets his first scalp
By Jordy Yager - 08/30/11 06:34 PM ET
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) won his first major investigative victory on Tuesday as two of the top federal officials involved with a flawed gun-tracking operation stepped down from office.
Along with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Issa has doggedly pursued the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives for the past five months, issuing scores of subpoenas, interviewing dozens of government officials and publicly lambasting President Obama for not being more forthcoming about the “Fast and Furious” operation.
On Tuesday, the DOJ handed Issa a victory, announcing that acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson, who has led the agency since 2009, was being replaced and transferred to the Office of Legal Policy. The news came in conjunction with a separate announcement that the U.S. attorney for Arizona, Dennis Burke, was resigning. Burke oversaw the legal aspects of “Fast and Furious,” providing advice to agents involved.
Brian Darling, a senior fellow in government studies at the Heritage Foundation, said the moves are a clear victory for Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who has pledged to continue his investigation until a full picture of the operation and its authorizers is painted.
“There’s a long way to go to get to the bottom of the ‘Fast and Furious’ scandal, but at least the Issa committee can say that they’ve uncovered enough information that has started the process of understanding everything that’s happened and having people removed who may have done wrong,” said Darling, who has served as counsel to former Sens. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) and Bob Smith (R-N.H.).
When Republicans took control of the House this year, they were excited about the thought that Issa would have subpoena powers to go after the Obama administration. Answering their call, the six-term lawmaker announced a laundry list of issues he planned to have his powerful committee look into.
But after six months of probes, ranging from the Department of Homeland Security’s Freedom of Information Act process to “Fast and Furious,” Issa had yet to find an issue that stuck beyond soundbites and flash headlines, on which his press team has worked tirelessly.
In the midst of his flailing investigations, Issa had the spotlight turned uncomfortably on himself when he was forced to fire his spokesman, Kurt Bardella, who had been described as Issa’s “Mini-Me,” after Bardella shared reporters’ emails with a writer for The New York Times.
Even Issa recognized that his chairmanship was not going as he had envisioned it.
“I’m a brand-new chairman; this is a brand-new majority,” Issa said two months ago at a markup of the committee’s six-month advisory report. “We didn’t do as well as we could have. We want to do better.”
Critics used the lack of an end result in his “Fast and Furious” investigation to question Issa’s effectiveness as chairman, saying he should wait for the Department of Justice’s inspector general to complete its own investigation, which was launched in March and is still ongoing.
But Tuesday’s announcement signaled a major victory for Issa, who expressed his concern that Melson and Burke not be made to take the fall for others in DOJ who may be responsible for the operation. While no hearings have been formally announced for when Congress returns in two weeks, they are expected.
“There are still many questions to be answered about what happened in ‘Operation Fast and Furious’ and who else bears responsibility, but these changes are warranted and offer an opportunity for the Justice Department to explain the role other officials and offices played in the infamous efforts to allow weapons to flow to Mexican drug cartels,” Issa in a news release.
Both Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have said they did not approve the operation, but have declined to comment further, citing a pending investigation by DOJ’s inspector general.
Lending credence to Issa’s suspicions that there are more officials responsible for the operation is testimony that Melson delivered to Issa and Grassley’s staff in secret during the July 4th holiday.
Melson said he was never briefed about the details of the operation and that “the general assumption among the people that were briefed on this case was that this was like any other case that ATF has done,” according to testimony provided by the committee’s Democrats.
Melson said he wished the agents who identified problems with the operation had made contact with him directly, because the supervisors they told never did. As a last resort, the agents reached out to Grassley, who launched his own probe into the matter, only to be stonewalled by the DOJ because he is in the minority and the administration only has to turn over information to the majority party.
Shortly after Melson’s interview, Issa backed away from his earlier calls for Melson’s resignation.
“Operation Fast and Furious” was launched in 2009 to sell firearms to known and suspected straw purchasers for Mexican drug cartels with the goal of tracking the guns and dismantling the gun-trafficking routes.
But agents were often told to abandon surveillance of the weapons, allowing them — and the straw buyers — to disappear, according to testimony from numerous agents before the House. The only remaining hope for agents to track the guns was if other agencies found them at a murder scene or during a drug raid and identified them by the serial numbers on the guns.
Officials linked two weapons found at the Arizona murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December to the operation. According to testimony, they are terrified that some of the thousands of guns still at large will be used to kill more innocent people.
"Victory"? It will be "victory" when Obama and Holder are both eating jail food.
I'm not holding my breath.
Melson and Burke have extracted themselves from discovery by leaving their posts. Subpoenas to testify are no longer valid by executive privilege.
But Melson already testified with his own att’y in secret. The DOJ does not know what he said. And the whistleblowers I was speaking of were ATF agents with boots on the ground, the three who came out first. Being reassigned to Florida, home of Castaway, would have me not sleeping well at all.
You are absolutely right.
This will not even start to gain traction until it is at least reported properly and I have not seen that even on conservative sources.
The huge number of guns involved show clearly the purpose was not to catch gun runners. The fact that they did not trace any and only made the slightest attempt to trace a few is also telling.
The real purpose was as clear as rat droppings in a sugar bowl. Obama and Holder were trying to get as many American manufactured guns as possible into Mexico and other Central American Countries to bolster their claim that American gun manufacturers were responsible for the crime in Mexico.
All you need to do is read what they were saying well before this was discovered.
We stand no chance as long as no one in the media tells the truth about this incredible scandal.
Even the few outlets who report it, continue to give them cover.
But any day now, they may yield to the stress.
As others before them have. Or, if not on their own, with help.
“Melson and Burke have extracted themselves from discovery by leaving their posts. Subpoenas to testify are no longer valid by executive privilege.”
They can be re-subpeonaed. Grand Jury rules are substantially forgiving that way. Ask Scooter Libby.
Poor company to keep.
:: Grand Jury rules are substantially forgiving that way. Ask Scooter Libby ::
Remind again what ^that^ outcome was? These folks can be provided executive privilege by Obamugabe (Holder) from congressional subpoenas.
Sounds like a typical “plea deal”. BTW, I’m in Chicago and understand the system.
It’s not victory until a guilty “someone” very high up goes to jail.
Incomplete victory is no victory; it's only putting off 'til tomorrow — and thereby worsening — the bloodbath you should've unleashed today.
So all they lose is their JOBS? If any one of us had been caught illegally buying guns and smuggling guns and explosives into Mexico that have resulted in possibly hundreds of murders we would be 1) jailed in the US for 20 years or more and then when we get out 2) extradited to Mexico where we would spend the rest of our lives in jail.
Melson was the one person who voluntarily testified without DOJ lawyers. This is Zero’s way to get him out of the action, and replace him with a “team player”
“Remind again what ^that^ outcome was?”
We were not discussing “outcome.” In fact, we were discussing the non-beginning. Congratulations on being from Chicago.
Results aren't expected before at least another 15+ months, i.e. after Election Day, unless it's a whitewash.
“This is a nothingburger.”
Hahahaha. Plus, it’s from The Hill. BFD.
We don’t get somebody with bawls in there, we’ll look pretty stupid if we DO win the election. Stupider, I mean.
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