Obama 'Admin' Failed to Stop Mexican Cartel Murder of ICE Agent with Smuggled Guns.

Obama DOJ Failed to Stop Mexican Cartel Murder of ICE Agent with Smuggled Guns.HT: JudicialWatch.

The Obama administration had numerous opportunities to arrest Mexican drug and weapons traffickers before murdering a federal U.S. agent and seriously wounding his partner but opted for the hands-off approach, a new federal audit reveals. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which operates under the Department of Justice (DOJ), should have stopped the traffickers—members of the Los Zetas organization—long before the Immigration and Customs (ICE) agents were ambushed in Mexico with firearms smuggled south of the border thanks to a once-secret Obama administration gun-running operation.

Instead, on February 15, 2011, ICE agents Victor Avila and Jaime Zapata were assaulted while returning to Mexico City from Matehuala, Mexico in their government-issued armored sports utility vehicle. Both agents were on assignment in Mexico and their SUV displayed diplomatic license plates. After passing through a toll booth on Mexican Route 57 in the early afternoon the agents noticed that two vehicles were following them, one of which passed and blocked the agents’ SUV from the front, forcing it to stop. Approximately eight assailants approached the SUV armed with various firearms, including assault weapons (AK-47s and AR-1Ss) and handguns. Two of the assailants gained access to the interior of the SUV through a partially open window and shot Zapata and Avila. Zapata died and Avila was seriously wounded.


Authorities determined that members of the renowned drug trafficking organization Los Zetas carried out the attack with weapons that had been purchased in Texas as part of a scandalous Obama administration operation that that allowed guns from the U.S. to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels.

Judicial Watch was a leader in investigating the Obama administration’s illegal Mexican gun-running operation and filed several lawsuits in federal court to uncover details. Known as Fast and Furious, the scandalous secret program was masterminded by the DOJ and implemented by the ATF under the leadership of Obama Attorney General Eric Holder. The weapons have been implicated in hundreds of crimes in both Mexico and the U.S., the records show. They also document how high-level officials of the Obama administration covered up the scandal and that the former president abused his office by asserting executive privilege to keep Fast and Furious records from going public. Obama even exerted executive privilege for Holder’s wife and mother to conceal emails with the then Attorney General involving the operation. Read the full story here.

Video - Eric Holder 1995: We Need to “Just Really Brainwash People Into Thinking About Guns in a Vastly Different Way”

Republican Plan in the make To Impeach Eric Holder

Republican Plan in the make To Impeach Eric Holder.(HuffingtonPost).

A group of House Republicans plan an effort to oust Attorney General Eric Holder by year’s end, Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) told the Gainesville Sun.

“It’s to get him out of office — impeachment,” said Yoho, who was a large-animal veterinarian before winning election last year. “It will probably be when we get back in [Washington]. It will be before the end of the year. This will go to the speaker and the speaker will decide if it comes up or not.”
Yoho’s chief of staff, Cat Cammack, said the congressman wants Holder fired for issues that include the Fast and Furious sting operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that left federal agents’ weapons in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. One of the guns was found at the 2010 scene of a Border Patrol agent’s killing.
"Obviously there is a lot frustration with our attorney general. You can name the botched programs," Cammack said. "Fast and Furious has been one of the number one complaints we get in our office and why no one has been held accountable."Read the full story here.

Holder Shruggs Off Being Held In Contempt of Congress – He Has No Respect For Them, Either

Holder Shruggs Off Being Held In Contempt of Congress – He Has No Respect For Them, Either.HT: NiceDebb.

Wow, this is really disturbing. We have an Attorney General who was held in criminal contempt of Congress, and who holds the United States Congress that did so, equally in contempt. He says that being held in contempt of Congress is no biggie because he doesn’t respect the 255 House members (including 17 Democrats) who voted in favor of it.
We are not in a good place, America:

Via ABC News:

In a wide-ranging, exclusive interview Wednesday, ABC News’ Pierre Thomas asked Holder how he reacted when House Republicans voted with 17 Democrats to hold him in contempt of Congress last June over ATF’s “Fast and Furious” gun scandal.
“It’s something that I think was unfortunate,” Holder said. “I think it’s a result of this kind of partisan sport that I think we engage in here in Washington far too often.”
Holder said the votes it didn’t bother him, considering who cast them.
“But I have to tell you that for me to really be affected by what happened, I’d have to have respect for the people who voted in that way,” Holder told ABC News. “And I didn’t, so it didn’t have that huge an impact on me.”

That’s our highest law enforcement officer in the land, speaking. Presumably, he does have ample respect for the 100 Democrats who haughtily left the House floor during the vote.
Our government is completely dysfunctional.Read the full story here.

Video - Fast And Furious Scandal: Mexican Man Claims To Have Shot U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

                                    Video can be watched on ABC News problem with script on Blogger.

Fast And Furious Scandal: Mexican Man Claims To Have Shot U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.(ABCNews).A Mexican national claims to be the man who shot and killed U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, whose death is tied to the “Fast and Furious” gun-walking scandal.Gustavo Cruz-Lozano, who says he killed Terry, turned himself in on Wednesday on charges related to a separate incident: threatening to kill Hidalgo County, Texas Sheriff Lupe Treviño.
But before he surrendered himself, Cruz-Lozano said in an exclusive interview with Univision News’ daily news magazine show “Primer Impacto” that he murdered Terry during a firefight on Dec. 14, 2010, while the agent was on patrol near the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona. Two AK-47 rifles found at the scene were linked to the botched Operation Fast and Furious, in which the U.S. government sought to track firearms sales to violent drug cartels. But it remains unclear whether those weapons were used to kill Terry.
Cruz-Lozano, 41, was not one of the several suspects arrested in the aftermath of Terry’s slaying. But in an interview with Univision News, he insisted he is the one who pulled the trigger on Terry.Read the full story here.

Video - Andy McCarthy – “Holder’s Department of Injustice”

Judicial Watch Sues Obama Justice Department to Obtain ‘Fast and Furious’ Records Withheld from Congress.

Judicial Watch Sues Obama Justice Department to Obtain ‘Fast and Furious’ Records Withheld from Congress.(JW).(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:12-cv-01510)) against the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) seeking access to Operation Fast and Furious records withheld from Congress by President Obama under executive privilege on June 20, 2012. Judicial Watch seeks the following records pursuant to a June 22, 2012, FOIA request filed with the Office of Information Policy (OIP), a component of the DOJ:

All records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012, as referenced in the letter of Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole to the Honorable Darrell E. Issa, Chairman, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the U.S. House of Representatives, dated June 20, 2012. More specifically, the records requested herein are those records described by Deputy Attorney General Cole in his June 20, 2012 letter as “the relevant post-February, 2011, documents” over which “the President has asserted executive privilege.”

The lawsuit was filed yesterday, on September 12, 2012.


The president’s assertion of executive privilege came just hours before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to respond to congressional subpoenas for Fast and Furious records. On June 28, 2012, the House voted 255-67 to hold Holder in contempt. (A number of Democrats joined the vote, while other Democrats, endorsing lawlessness, walked out in protest.) A second vote, 258-95, authorized the pursuit of records through civil litigation in the courts. Moreover, documents uncovered by CBS News seem to indicate that AG Holder may have perjured himself during congressional testimony detailing what he knew about Fast and Furious and when.

“It certainly appears that the president improperly invoked executive privilege to cover up the Fast and Furious scandal and protect his corrupt Attorney General,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

 “It’s long past time for the Obama administration to come clean and complete the public record on one of the most egregious violations of public trust in modern political history. We hope our lawsuit pries loose more information and exposes Obama’s abuse of power in holding these records secret.”Read the full story here.

Darrell Issa to Sue Eric Holder Monday.

Darrell Issa to Sue Eric Holder Monday.(RC).House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa plans to sue Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday for refusing to provide documents related to the "Fast and Furious" gun-smuggling operation. "The committee expects to file the civil contempt suit against the attorney general Monday," a Republican source said. The suit will be filed in the federal district court for the District of Columbia. The action is the latest escalation in the dispute between House Republicans and the Justice Department over the documents, which relate to a botched gun-smuggling operation. On June 28, the House voted to hold Holder in contempt of Congress and authorized the Oversight panel to bring suit to enforce its rights.Read the full story here.

New Evidence shows Hillary a mastermind behind Gunwalker.

New Evidence shows Hillary a mastermind behind Gunwalker.(Examiner).By Anthony Martin.Last week it was reported that the State Department and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were deeply involved in the scandal known as , or . Today, however, new evidence has surfaced indicating that not only was Hillary deeply involved in the scandal but was one of the masterminds behind it. According to investigative citizen journalist Mike Vanderboegh, sources close to the development of the Gunwalker scheme state that early on, Hillary and her trusted associated at State, Andrew J. Shapiro, devised at least part of the framework of what would later become Operation Fast and Furious. It was Shapiro who first described the details of the proposed scheme early in 2009 just after the Obama Administration took office. Vanderboegh relates the following:

My sources say that as Hillary’s trusted subordinate, it was Shapiro who first described to the Secretary of State the details of what has become the Gunwalker Scandal. The precise extent to which Hillary Clinton‘s knowledge of, and responsibility for, the Gunwalker Plot, lies within the memories of these two men, Shapiro and Steinberg, sources say. The sources also express dismay that the Issa committee is apparently restricting itself to the Department of Justice and not venturing further afield. The House Foreign Affairs Committee, they say, needs to summon these two men and their subordinates — especially at the Mexico Desk at State — and question them under oath as to what Hillary Clinton knew about the origins of the Gunwalker Scandal and when she knew it. There is one other thing those sources agree upon. The CIA, they say, knows “everything” about the “Mexican hat dance” that became the Gunwalker Scandal.

The ‘Steinberg’ mentioned in the quote above is Hillary Clinton’s former Deputy Secretary of State, who was appointed directly by Barack Obama and was considered from the start to be an ‘Obama man’ whose objective was to carry out the wishes of the President in the State Department. Hillary had said of Steinberg,

Clinton said Steinberg had been a “fixture” at meetings with the National Security Council (NSC) and frequently represented the US State Department at the White House.

That statement is key. Hillary herself stayed out of all meetings dealing with strategy concerning the euphemism the Administration used to designate Gunwalker, ‘strategy meetings on Mexico and the problem of drug and gun trafficking.’ Hillary’s absence would give the impression that she had no connection to the scheme while making sure that her views were represented by Steinberg and Shapiro, both of whom were fully complicit with the details that developed concerning how to pad statistics on U.S. guns in Mexico. According to sources, Hillary was obsessed with gun statistics that would prove that ’90% of the firearms used by Mexican criminals come from the United States.’ As previouly reported, that meme, repeated incessantly by Democratic Senators, Barack Obama, certan members of the ATF, Janet Napolitano, and Hillary Clinton was patently and blatantly false. The fact that they all knew it was false is borne out by the lengths to which each of the above named co-conspirators went to attempt to ‘prove’ that the 90% figure was true. Again, Vanderboegh relates the following:

My sources say that this battle of the “statistics” was taken very seriously by all players — the White House, State and Justice. Yet, WHY was this game of statistics so important to the players? If some weapons from the American civilian market were making it to Mexico into the hand of drug gang killers that was bad enough. What was the importance of insisting that it was 90 percent, 80 percent, or finally 70 percent? Would such statistics make any difference to the law enforcement tactics necessary to curtail them? No. This statistics mania is similar to the focus on “body counts” in Vietnam. Yet if Vietnam body counts were supposed to be a measure of how we were winning that war, the focus on the 90 percent meme was certainly not designed to be a measure of how we were winning the war against arming the cartels, but rather by what overwhelming standard we were LOSING. Why? Recall what the whistleblower ATF agents told us right after this scandal broke in the wake of the death of Brian Terry: “ATF source confirms ‘walking’ guns to Mexico to ‘pad’ statistics.”

Thus, from the beginning the scheme was to pad statistics on U.S. guns in Mexico in order to be in a strengthened position to call for gun bans and strict gun control at a time when it was politically unpopular. Further, the scheme would involve a made-up statistic, out of thin air–90%–which then had to be proved by using civilian gun retailers along the southern border as unsuspecting pawns to walk U.S. guns into Mexico by ATF agents, straw purchasers, and others with connections to Mexican drug cartels. And the evidence points to the fact that Hillary Clinton was one of the original Administration officials who was ‘in the loop’ on the scheme from the very beginning. Be sure to catch my blog at The Liberty Sphere. Visit my ministry site at Martin Christian Ministries. Subscribe by clicking the links at the top of the page, or below, and you will receive free notifications of new articles plus a free newsletter.Read the full story here.

Syria casts shadow as arms trade treaty negotiations kick off in New York.

Syria casts shadow as arms trade treaty negotiations kick off in New York. (AA).One of the reasons this month's negotiations are taking place is that the United States, the world's biggest arms trader accounting for over 40 percent of global conventional arms transfers, reversed U.S. policy on the issue after Barack Obama became president and decided in 2009 to support a treaty. But U.S. officials say Washington insisted in February on having the ability to "veto a weak treaty" during this month's talks, if necessary. It also seeks to protect U.S. domestic rights to bear arms - a sensitive issue in the United States. The other five top arms suppliers are Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. Wood, Macdonald and Abramson said some of the top arms trading countries have been joining other nations in an attempt to weaken the treaty. They said the United States, China, Syria and Egypt were pushing to exclude ammunition. China, they added, wants to exempt small arms, while several Middle East states oppose making compliance with human rights norms a mandatory criterion for allowing arms deliveries.Delegates from around the world gather in New York on Monday for the start of month-long U.N.-hosted negotiations to hammer out the first-ever binding treaty to regulate the global weapons market, valued at more than $60 billion a year. Arms control campaigners say one person every minute dies as a result of armed violence around the world and that a convention is needed to prevent illicitly traded guns from pouring into conflict zones and fueling wars and atrocities. Most U.N. member states favor a strong treaty. If they get their way, all signatories would be charged with enforcing compliance to any treaty by companies that produce arms and with taking steps to prevent rogue dealers from operating within their borders. They say conflicts in Syria and elsewhere cast a shadow over the talks, reminding delegates of the urgency of the situation.There is no guarantee the July 2-27 negotiations will produce a treaty, let alone a good one. In February, preparatory talks on the ground rules for this month’s talks nearly collapsed due to procedural wrangling and other disagreements. In the end, the United States and other countries succeeded in ensuring the treaty must be approved unanimously, so any one country can effectively veto a deal. But the treaty may not be doomed if that happens. Wood said nations that support a strong pact could bring a treaty to the 193-nation U.N. General Assembly and adopt it with a two-thirds majority vote if there is no consensus in July. Given the predominant position of the U.S. as a global arms exporter (the world’s biggest arms exporter with a $55 billion-a-year trade in conventional firearms), any such treaty would have limited relevance without its participation, he said. Ratification would require passage by a 2/3 majority of the U.S. Senate in addition to presidential approval, which is rendered unlikely by opposition from gun rights groups such as the National Rifle Association. As of September 2011, 58 U.S. Senators opposed the Arms Trade Treaty, more than 1/3, according to Alhaj. Wood, Macdonald and Abramson said some of the top arms trading countries have been joining other nations in an attempt to weaken the treaty. They said the United States, China, Syria and Egypt were pushing to exclude ammunition. China, they added, wants to exempt small arms, while several Middle East states oppose making compliance with human rights norms a mandatory criterion for allowing arms deliveries.Hmmmm......This treaty would make everyone run "FAST AND FURIOUS" to the Gunshop?Read the full story here.

Issa: Executive Privilege Reserved For Presidential Decision-Making.

Issa: Executive Privilege Reserved For Presidential Decision-Making.(BLN).By Susanne Posel.Darrell Issa, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman, wrote a letter to President Barack Obama wherein he directly challenged Obama’s use of executive privilege, essentially hiding certain documents concerning the Fast and Furious operation.
There was a formal request that Obama provide “legal justification for the privilege claim and a list of specific documents covered by it.”

Issa explained that according to case law, “executive privilege is reserved for direct presidential decision-making.” 

By intimation, Obama is admitting to have overseen the operation by his use of executive privilege.

While Obama has asserted in public forum that he and Holder were not involved in F&F, he is essentially lying by omission.
Issa reminds Obama that either his “most senior advisers were involved in managing Operation Fast & Furious … and the fallout” or he is hiding behind “a presidential power that you know to be unjustified solely for the purpose of further obstructing a congressional investigation.”
Holder, trying to bargain with the House Oversight Committee, offered documents in exchange for the contempt charge dropped. Holder spoke to Obama in private, wherein he told Obama to use executive privilege because the documents requested by the HOC would have “significant damaging consequences”.
Last week, Holder advised Obama to use his executive privilege card concerning the internal documents of the F&F.
Issa mentioned Board Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s death and pointed out that the gun that killed Terry had been shipped into Mexico for the drug cartels by US agents.
The Terry family has been requesting for over a year and a half for the US government to hold those responsible within the government to “justice and accountability”. They recognize that it is very “disappointing that [the Terry family] are now faced with an administration that seems more concerned with protecting themselves rather than revealing the truth behind Operation Fast and Furious.”
Holder had admitted this fact in a letter written in February of 2011. Seeing Holder retracted that statement several months later, Issa cites that “lying to Congress is a crime”. All documents pertaining to that denial will be subpoenaed by the HOC; specifically correspondence between Obama’s administration and Holder between June of 2012, until the claim of executive privilege.Hmmmm.......GunWalker."These boots keep on walking, one of these days they'll walk all over you".Read the full story here.

Obama Contributor, Who Helped Enact Assault-Weapons Ban, Ran ‘Fast and Furious’.

Obama Contributor, Who Helped Enact Assault-Weapons Ban, Ran ‘Fast and Furious’.(CNSNews).Via: InfidelBloggers.By By Fred Lucas.Dennis K. Burke, who as a lawyer for the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1990s was a key player behind the enactment of the 1994 assault-weapons ban, and who then went on to become Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano’s chief of staff, and a contributor to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential primary campaign, and then a member of Obama's transition team focusing on border-enforcement issues, ended up in the Obama administration as the U.S. attorney in Arizona responsible for overseeing Operation Fast and Furious.
When Obama nominated Burke to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, Burke told the Arizona Capitol Times he believed he understood what the president and his attorney general wanted him to do.
“There’s clearly been direction provided already by President Obama and Attorney General Holder as to what they want to be doing, and this is an office that is at the center of the issues of border enforcement,” said Burke.
Over the course of several days, CNSNews.com left multiple telephone messages with Burke for comment on this story. He did not respond.From 1999 to 2003, Burke was chief deputy and special assistant to Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano.
In 2003, when Napolitano became governor, Burke became her chief of staff. He stayed in that job until the fall of 2008, when he left to help Democratic political campaigns, including then-Sen. Obama’s presidential campaign.
Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show that on Jan. 9, 2008, while working as Gov. Napolitano’s chief of staff, Burke contributed $2,000 to then-Sen Obama’s presidential primary campaign. Since 1997, according to FEC records, Burke has contributed a total of $16,350 to various Democratic candidates.
After Obama was elected in November 2008, Burke joined his presidential transition team, serving on the Immigration Policy Working Group.
Eight days before Obama’s inauguration, on Jan. 12, 2009--while Burke was working on the transition team--Obama met with Mexican President Felipe Calderon at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C. At that meeting, Obama “pledged” to take action to stop the flow of guns from the United States to Mexico.
Obama also decided to put Burke’s old boss, incoming Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, in a leadership role in making the gun-trafficking problem a top priority.
“President-elect Obama expressed support for efforts in the border states in both the United States and Mexico to eradicate drug-related violence and stop the flow of guns and cash,” incoming White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement at the time. “He told President Calderón that he intends to ask the Secretary of Homeland Security to lead an effort to increase information sharing to strengthen those efforts. He pledged to take more effective action from the United States to stem the flow of arms from the United States to Mexico.”
When Napolitano became Homeland Security secretary, Burke moved from the Obama transition team to become her senior adviser. On Feb. 25, 2009, a little more than a month after Obama had made his “pledge” to Calderon, Napolitano testified in the House Homeland Security Committee. She stressed that stopping the flow of guns to Mexico was a top priority of the Obama administration and key focus of her work.Responding to a question about violence on the border, Napolitano said the administration was going to work with the Mexican government on the issue. Then she said: “Secondly, it is looking at, government-wide, at what we can do to stop the southbound export of weaponry, particularly assault-type weapons and grenades that are being used in that drug war.”Hmmmm...........This is for me the most important phrase in the whole article:

"He told President Calderón that he intends to ask the Secretary of Homeland Security to lead an effort to increase information sharing to strengthen those efforts. He pledged to take more effective action from the United States to stem the flow of arms from the United States to Mexico."

Any questions left who ordered "Fast and Furious"?Read the full story here.

Video - House Finds Holder in Contempt Over 'Fast and Furious' Investigation.

The GOP-led House voted Thursday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to provide key information pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious, making Holder the first sitting Cabinet member to be held in contempt. The vote was 255 to 67. Seventeen Democrats joined the majority of Republicans in voting yes. GOP Rep. Dan Lipinski voted not present, and 65 Democrats left the floor before the vote.
 “Today’s vote is the regrettable culmination of what became a misguided -- and politically motivated -- investigation during an election year,” Holder said after the vote. “By advancing it over the past year and a half, Congressman Issa and others have focused on politics over public safety.”

The U.N. Speaks: The Arms Trade Treaty Will Affect “Legally Owned Weapons”

The U.N. Speaks: The Arms Trade Treaty Will Affect “Legally Owned Weapons”.(Heritage).Yesterday, the U.N. released its press kit for the July conference that will finalize the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The most interesting item in the kit is a lengthy paper by the U.N.’s Coordinating Action on Small Arms (CASA) program titled “The Impact of Poorly Regulated Arms Transfers on the Work of the UN.” This paper perpetuates the belief, on which much of the ATT is based, that the big problem the world faces is a lack of agreed standards on arms transfers. That’s wrong: The big problem the world faces in this regard is that many U.N. member states are dictatorships, supporters of terrorists, or simply incapable of controlling their own borders.
But the paper makes it clear that the job of the U.N.—as the U.N. itself sees it—is to make the case for a very broad treaty. As CASA puts it, “Advocacy efforts should be developed…through relevant reports and op-eds, messages, and statements at relevant meetings and to the press.” So watch out for U.S. taxpayer-funded funded U.N. propaganda in a newspaper near you. But in spite of its desperate efforts to rebut Second Amendment concerns, the U.N. can’t stop stepping on its own shoelaces. After proclaiming that the ATT “does not aim to impede or interfere with the lawful ownership and use of weapons,” the CASA paper goes on to say that “United Nations agencies have come across many situations in which various types of conventional weapons have been…misused by lawful owners” and that the “arms trade must therefore be regulated in ways that would…minimize the risk of misuse of legally owned weapons.” How, exactly, would the ATT do that if it doesn’t “impede” or “interfere” with lawful ownership? The U.N. would have a lot more credibility on the ATT if it didn’t imply so regularly that the problem is as much lawful ownership as it is the international arms trade.Read the full story here.

Video - Judge Napolitano: It’s Difficult to See How ‘Fast and Furious’ Could Fall Into Protected Executive Privilege Categories.

HT: Fox News.

Fast And Furious: Executive Privilege Is Illegitimate to Shield Wrongdoing!

Fast And Furious: Executive Privilege Is Illegitimate to Shield Wrongdoing!(Heritage).By Todd Gaziano.As Holder surely knew all these past months, there is no privilege that exists between Congress and the executive branch to withhold documents except the constitutional executive privilege, which is based on the separation of powers. The slated House committee vote to hold Holder in contempt today was unfortunately necessary to get him to at least reconsider his lawless course of stonewalling. In a desperate attempt to prevent the contempt vote in the last few hours, Holder asked President Obama to invoke executive privilege to shield these 1,300 pages of documents from Congress, and the President apparently agreed to do so. Yet that is not the end of the story. Even if properly involved, the Supreme Court has made clear that executive privilege is not absolute. DOJ must provide an explanation why all those documents fit one of the recognized categories of executive privilege. It is questionable whether they all are legitimately subject to executive privilege, for several reasons.

First, the Supreme Court in United States v. Nixon (1974) held that executive privilege cannot be invoked at all if the purpose is to shield wrongdoing. 

The courts held that Nixon’s purported invocation of executive privilege was illegitimate, in part, for that reason. There is reason to suspect that this might be the case in the Fast and Furious cover-up and stonewalling effort. Congress needs to get to the bottom of that question to prevent an illegal invocation of executive privilege and further abuses of power. That will require an index of the withheld documents and an explanation of why each of them is covered by executive privilege—and more. Even a proper invocation of executive privilege regarding particular documents is not final. But there is at least one helpful development in Holder’s request that the President invoke executive privilege to shield these documents: The President now owns the consequences of further stonewalling.The American people will now clearly understand that it is President Obama who doesn’t want them to know who is to blame for the Fast and Furious scandal—and whether his Administration has done anything to prevent it from happening again. Read the full story here.Todd Gaziano is the Director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. He previously served in the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the Attorney General and the President on the invocation of executive privilege. He was also a chief oversight counsel in the House of Representatives

Video - Eric Holder Found in Contempt of Congress by House Panel.

Video - No deal: After meeting, Issa says contempt vote on Holder is still on.

No deal: After meeting, Issa says contempt vote on Holder is still on.(HA).Issa wants extensive documents, Holder’s offering a few documents plus, er, a briefing. If he doesn’t change his tune by 10 a.m. tomorrow, the contempt vote is happening. This is some game of chicken they’re playing here.

The announcement Tuesday night by committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., followed a closed-door meeting at the Capitol between Issa and other Republican and Democratic lawmakers with Holder at the U.S. Capitol. Issa described himself as disappointed and still hoping for a breakthrough… Holder, speaking in the Capitol Rotunda to reporters, said he had come “in good faith” and that he had made a number of documents, specifically those from February to December of 2011, available. Asked if he thought he and his department could avoid the contempt vote, Holder said, “The ball’s in their court.” But Issa said, “Today, the Attorney General informed us that the Department would not be producing those documents. The only offer they made involved us ending our investigation.”

Remember, Boehner’s reportedly not thrilled with the idea of F and F hearings sucking up lots of political oxygen during the campaign. That’s what Holder’s counting on, I assume — that Issa will either find some excuse at the last minute to avert the contempt vote at the committee level or that, if the committee does vote, Boehner will somehow bury the contempt recommendation before it comes before the full House for a vote. (Follow the last link and you’ll see that even if the House votes to hold Holder in contempt, there’s always a chance that they’ll reach a deal on the documents with the DOJ before the inevitable court battle occurs.)Read the full story here.

Video - "Fast and Furious" - We deserve answers and accountability.

Video: Senator John Cornyn to Holder: 'Resign'.

HT: DailyCaller.