Posted on 10/27/2011 5:44:10 AM PDT by marktwain
It was faint at first, but it grows ever louder, this cry for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign. Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) today became the fourth Congressman to explicitly call for Holder to take responsibility for the lethally reckless Operation Fast and Furious and to voluntarily leave his post because of his presumed authorization of the program. Walsh’s behest follows similar requests from Reps. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.).
Walsh today sent a harshly-worded letter to Holder, in which he asked Holder to “resign immediately and issue an apology to the American people [he has] failed to serve.” Walsh also took Holder to task for his stonewalling of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into Fast and Furious.
But the most memorable portion of the letter came, not at the beginning, when Walsh lambasted Holder’s understanding of his job, nor at the end, when he called for Holder’s resignation. It came in the middle, when Walsh delved into the seemingly-obvious-but-not-yet-confirmed motivation for the program:
Your Department has made an enormous error in judgment. It instructed federally-licensed firearms dealers to illegally sell at least 2,000 guns that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) intended to be trafficked to drug cartels in Mexico. The results of this error in judgment have implicated the United States in well over one hundred deadly crimes and the deaths of two federal agents.This not only raises serious questions about your ability to serve as the head of the Justice Department, but also begs the question of why an anti-gun Administration would knowingly force licensed firearms dealers to sell guns to violent criminals. I raise this because Operation Fast and Furious — if the facts of this case had not come to light — would have been used by this Administration as another false argument to attack law-abiding American gun owners.
The American people deserve to know if your Department had any intent to link the legal purchase of firearms here in the U.S. to crimes committed near our southern border. Operation Fast and Furious funneled firearms legally purchased at gun shops in the U.S. to known criminal syndicates to prove these syndicates have access to legal purchased weapons. This is a deliberate attempt to vilify and attack the millions of gun owners in America who value our Second Amendment and have never broken the law.
Walsh’s posited explanation appears to be the only plausible one. Why else would the administration authorize the program — then fail to follow up to catch the criminals the program was purportedly designed to catch? Had ATF made any kind of legitimate attempt to track the weapons — had they not allowed the guns to so completely disappear into the hands of violent criminals — it might have been believable that the administration sought to use the program to disrupt the power of Mexican drug cartels.
Yet, Walsh’s explanation is not a fun one to believe. It’s sickening to think anyone in the administration would really be so rash and so ideologically driven as to risk the nearly inevitable results of this program — the deaths that did, in fact, result — just to prove the point that legally purchased weapons show up at violent crime scenes, just to suggest the government ought to make it harder to legally purchase guns in the first place. It’s even more terrifying to think someone as high up as Holder would be.
Walsh and the rest are brave to call for Holder’s resignation — but they definitely should. Walsh isn’t afraid to take the matter to the president, either.
“If [Holder] fails to [resign], I would ask that President Obama dismiss him immediately,” Walsh said today.
Then again, Obama has stood by Holder through all kinds of nonsense, so no real reason exists to believe he won’t stand by him now — unless F&F somehow becomes well-known enough to threaten his reelection.
Gunwalker ping.
I can hear Holder´s FU from here.
He’s staying in office for whatever protections it provides him from prosecution which seems almost certain to follow since there was no effort to track the weapons. How can they claim it was a legitimate sting operation and then not track the weapons?
Hopefully no prosecution until Obama is out of office and cannot pardon him although i would not be surprised if he tries to pardon him for crimes of which he is not yet convicted of.
Obummer will reluctantly accept his resignation and all is forgiven and they think forgotten.
There is the murder of a US border patrol agent and complicity in the murder in this story and it won't just fade away into the night.
Some gummint folks need to go to jail.
Wow. Grow, legs.
DITTO -
Criminals who use their offices as seats of corruption shouldn’t just be allowed to walk away when they are caught.
1) Holder needs to continue to stay in the limelight so that all the players in involved in this get their just due. If he becomes the sacrificial lamb now the chances of this are severely diminished.
2) When Holder is removed from office, it should be a relocation to a federal holding cell, not the cushy retirement that a 'resignation' would bring.
Issa and company need to quit with the empty threats and harshly worded memos and start unsealing indictments.
With one of those rimless stainless steel toilets.
Lets not rush this. We don’t want him convicted of anything until Obama is out of office and can’t pardon him.
Wish he’d been more careful with the wording. Or has it been firmly established that gun dealers were “forced?” Has it been confirmed by evidence that F&F was a “deliberate” attempt to vilify and attack gun owners in America?
Not doubting the conclusions, but when he says it without something heavy to back it up, it’s easy for Dems to dismiss him as partisan. (One of their bad words for anyone on to them.)
And a corrupt MSM has stood by Obama. While more and more Americans are finally seeing the MSM's treachery, the cover ups for the administration continue. The Republicans need to raise the decibel level to cut through the media's smokescreen.
Holder needs to be frogmarched out of the Justice Department HQ in handcuffs.
Like Ford did for Nixon?
8^(
Holder is just a scapegoat for Obama.
If these people wnat the real planner of fast & Furious they need to impeach Obama.
Holder isn’t smart enough to come up with this scheme.He just carried it out. If we get rid of Holder the real criminal,Obama, get away again.
Stay Mr. Holder, Take the real criminal down with you.
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