Predictably, Fox News is agog with excitement and anticipation over the latest developments in their Eric Holder witch hunt the Fast and Furious scandal. There's the assertion of Executive Privilege by the White house and a potential contempt citation for Holder. I'll be following the news and posting developments as I can. Please help by adding your own.
I took a screen shot a few minutes ago of the home pages of CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. CNN and MSNBC featured the Obama administration's assertion. But only Fox News has it dominating its page - with a link to follow the Holder contempt vote live.
The White House has issued a response to allegations that its assertion of executive privilege is a cover up:
"With millions of Americans still struggling to pay the bills, Republicans announced at the beginning of this year that one of their top priorities was to investigate the Administration and damage the President politically. We are ten days away from the expiration of federal transportation funding which guarantees jobs for almost a million construction workers because Congress hasn't passed a transportation bill. We are eleven days away from nearly seven and a half million students seeing their loan rates double because Congress hasn't acted to stop it. But instead of creating jobs or strengthening the middle-class, Congressional Republicans are spending their time on a politically-motivated, taxpayer-funded election-year fishing expedition.
The problem of gunwalking was a field-driven tactic that dated back to the previous Administration, and it was this Administration's Attorney General who ended it. In fact, the Justice Department has spent the past fourteen months accommodating Congressional investigators, producing 7,600 pages of documents, and testifying at eleven Congressional hearings. Yet, Republicans insist on moving forward with an effort that Republicans and objective legal experts have noted is purely political.
Given the economic challenges facing the country, we believe that House Republicans should work with the rest of Congress and the President to create more jobs, not more political theater."
Think Progress has Five Things To Know About The Republican Witchhunt Against Attorney General Holder. The first one is:
1. Issa Has No Case: Issa’s uncovered no evidence showing Holder bears any blame for the botched operations begun under George W. Bush, even though the Justice Department turned over thousands of pages of documents concerning the operations. Instead of accepting this fact, Issa has requested many more documents containing confidential information regarding ongoing law enforcement investigations, and is now threatening to hold Holder in contempt if these documents are not turned over. Holder is entirely correct to withhold these documents, however, because Justice Department documents are not subject to congressional subpoena if they would reveal “strategies and procedures that could be used by individuals seeking to evade [DOJ's] law enforcement efforts.”
The other four are: Reagan’s Justice Department Agreed With Holder; Law Enforcement Rejects Issa’s Witchhunt; Even Top Republicans Think Issa Goes Too Far and Issa Is Fixated On A Conspiracy Theory.
House Oversight Committee votes, along party lines, to recommend citing Holder for contempt. The New York Times reported that Speaker John Boehner said the House will vote next week "unless Mr. Holder turned over more documents related to the botched gun-trafficking investigation known as 'Fast and Furious.'"
I’m thinking there will be some kind of settlement. But I fear the Repubs will have made their political hay and the Dems will just drop it, without using the incident to hold up the GOP to ridicule or whatever. I hope I’m wrong. But there’s been a witch hunt for Holder since at least 2010 and the Obama admin. has done very little to counter it and doesn’t even seem all that prepared to deal with it, as if they’ve sloughed it off as inconsequential without a thought to the optics and the way that the GOP makes political theater.
America – One Nation Under GOP
“Ah, remember the good old days when âexecutive privilegeâ was admired on FoxGOPTV and contempt was encouraged?”
Viz, you forget: just as “9-11 changed everything”, “the black guy with the funny name getting in the White House” changed everything . . . again . . .
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