White House Invokes Executive Privilege on DOJ Docs

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By DEVIN DWYER - ABC News




The White House has invoked executive privilege over documents at the center of the stand-off between Attorney General Eric Holder and Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigating the Justice Department's "Fast and Furious" program.

"The President has asserted executive privilege over the relevant post-February 4, 2011, documents," deputy attorney general James Cole wrote Issa this morning.

"We regret that we have arrived at this point, after the many steps we have taken to address the Committee's concerns and to accommodate the Committee's legitimate oversight interests regarding Operation Fast and Furious."

The move comes ahead of an expected committee vote on whether to put Holder in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over the documents. It is the first time President Obama has asserted executive privilege in a dispute with Congress.

In a letter Tuesday to Obama, Holder formally requested presidential intervention, citing "significant, damaging consequences" in releasing the documents and "separation of powers concerns."

The documents "were not generated in the the course of the conduct of Fast and Furious. Instead, they were created after the investigative tactics at issue in that operation had terminated and in the course of the Department's deliberative process concerning how to respond to congressional and related media inquiries into that operation," he wrote.

Holder has said the department has already provided "extraordinary" access to documents and administration officials to answer questions about the incident.

Still, Issa and Republicans on the committee believe the as yet undisclosed information is critical to understanding how the administration responded to the unfolding scandal surrounding program that allegedly allowed U.S. weapons to cross the border into Mexico in order to track gun runners. One of the weapons was later found to be used in the shooting death of a U.S. border patrol agent.

Republican committee members say the documents in question could shed light on whether officials participated in a cover up.

"Our purpose has never been to hold the attorney general in contempt. Our purpose has always been to get the information the committee needs to complete its work, that it is not only entitled to but obligated to do," Issa said today during a committee hearing.

"More than eight months after a subpoena, and clearly after the question of executive privilege could have and should have been asserted, this untimely assertion by the Justice Department falls short of any reason to delay today's proceedings," he said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who has been leading a Senate investigation into Fast and Furious, said Obama's move raises "monumental questions."

"How can the President assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement? How can the President exert executive privilege over documents he's supposedly never seen? Is something very big being hidden to go to this extreme?" Grassley said in a statement.

Obama administration officials say the assertion of privilege over non-presidential executive branch communications is not unprecedented.

President Bill Clinton used executive privilege 14 times and President George W. Bush invoked it six times, officials said, including in cases that involved documents similar to those sought in the Fast and Furious congressional inquiry.

[Muddy]

Lookin out for his homeys..

[Acid Trip]

There are no words to describe how fucking shady Obama and Holder are being. To pour some salt on an open wound, Holder retracted his claim that his Bush predecessor knew about Fast and Furious. Basically he blamed Bush's team and is apologizing (if you can call it that) for the lie.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/holder...rticle/2500157

"In a second major retraction over its version of the the gun-walking scandal, the Justice Department has retracted Attorney General Eric Holder's charge in a hearing last week that his Bush administration predecessor had been briefed on the affair.

In a memo just released by Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa senator reveals that Holder also didn't apologize to former Attorney General Michael Mukasey for dragging him into the Fast & Furious scandal that is headed for a major legal clash and likely contempt of Congress charge against Holder.

This is the second time in nearly seven months that the Department has gotten its facts wrong about gunwalking. Attorney General Holder accused Attorney General Mukasey, without producing any evidence, of having been briefed on gunwalking in Wide Receiver. The case Attorney General Mukasey was briefed on, Hernandez, is fundamentally different from both Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious since it involved cooperation with the Mexican government. Attorney General Holder's retraction should have included an apology to the former Attorney General.

In his eagerness to blame the previous administration, Attorney General Holder got his facts wrong. And his tactic didn't bring us any closer to understanding how a bad policy evolved and continued. Bad policy is bad policy, regardless of how many administrations carried it out. Ironically, the only document produced yesterday by the Department appears to show that senior officials in the Attorney General's own Department were strategizing about how to keep gunwalking in both Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious under wraps."

[PorkChopSandwiches]

:impeach:

[perrhaps]

I hope Romney's campaign is smart enough to have murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's family do a campaign commercial about this.

[FBD]

There are no words to describe how fucking shady Obama and Holder are being.

couldnt have said it better myself.


both Obama and Holder and a bunch of others should be in fucking jail over this. but unfortunately that's too politically incorrect.