A Contempt Vote For Holder
The media have shown surprising resistance to the Fast & Furious scandal. So their readers and viewers may be surprised if the House Oversight and Government holds Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. The House panel may do just that on Wednesday morning, after wrangling since last year over documents related to the scandal.
And if they do get a contempt vote, what will the media and other defenders of the Obama administration do? Will they attempt to justify his refusal to turn over 1300 pages of documents that might explain just what in tarnation was going on with the Fast & Furious scandal? For months, their answers have ranged from obfuscatory to non-sensical. Congress has attempted to determine who authorized and managed the gunwalking operation.
Congress wants to know who prepared a February 4, 2011 letter where the Obama administration claimed that the U.S. did not knowingly help smuggle guns to Mexico (so-called “gun walking”), including the gun used to kill US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.
The Obama administration admits the letter was in error, but they have always maintained that the knowledge of these tactics did not reach the top political appointees in the Obama Department of Justice.
After a year-and-a-half, the dam broke when a mole in the Justice Department gave the House Oversight committee a set of wiretap applications proving that high department officials knew about the administration's efforts to aid the gun smuggling. The leaked documents destroyed much of Attorney General Eric Holder's credibility since he had claimed that they were not relevant to the case and refused to release them.
Holder's former spokesman retorts that Republican members of Congress don't really care about a gunwalking scandal that killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent but are actually just upset about Holder's Justice Department meddling with cases involving voting rights, changing marriage law and immigration issues. Hey, thanks for the reminder, spokesman!It's a shame that Holder wouldn't turn over documents to Congress and is otherwise so resistant to transparency in government. While Holder's entire m.o. has been to do things to help his boss, I don't think a contempt vote will help President Obama.And yet I like to game out how people will respond. So how will Obama defenders defend Holder? And how should defenders of transparent government stay focused on the message?
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Dec '10
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
After a contempt vote, then what? Is there a way to arrest him?
Apr '12
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
The MSM will immediately adopt Holder's diversion by calling it a "constitutional crisis". The focus will be on Republican overreach. There's no need for them to defend Holder, he's been fair, and they'll be sure to point out that this is just another Republican political ploy.
Why would the MSM stop being a propaganda organ of the Obama administration?
Jun '10
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
I always knew he was contemptible. So is his boss.
May '10
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
Bad news is like a snowball rolling downhill...right now, Obama's presidency is just one dirty snowball turning into a comet.
Even the New York Times can't ignore a comet...
Aug '11
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
I think it's telling that it was only a week ago that NBC Nightly News finally broke their 18-month silence on Fast and Furious. A lot of confused viewers out there wondering why they haven't heard about this.
The unfortunate thing about keeping viewers in the dark so long is that now that it's coming to a head, it's easy for the media to make it look like it's just election-year nonsense from Republicans.
Nov '11
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
Per @RyanRuggiero with CNBC, Obama has now claimed executive privilege over the Fast and Furious documents sub-poena'd. Given that Obama had stayed above the fray more or less this shows to me just how bad the documents are, and how far the scandal reached (at least to Holder's office, if not higher.)
h/t to DrewM. with Aceofspadeshq
Edited on June 20, 2012 at 4:20pmJul '11
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
Austin Murrey: Per @RyanRuggiero with CNBC, Obama has now claimed executive privilege over the Fast and Furious documents sub-poena'd. Given that Obama had stayed above the fray more or less this shows to me just how bad the documents are, and how far the scandal reached (at least to Holder's office, if not higher.)
h/t to DrewM. with Aceofspadeshq · 1 minute ago
Have a big helping of Constitutional crisis, America!
Nov '11
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
EstoniaKat
Austin Murrey: Per @RyanRuggiero with CNBC, Obama has now claimed executive privilege over the Fast and Furious documents sub-poena'd. Given that Obama had stayed above the fray more or less this shows to me just how bad the documents are, and how far the scandal reached (at least to Holder's office, if not higher.)
h/t to DrewM. with Aceofspadeshq · 1 minute ago
Have a big helping of Constitutional crisis, America! · 0 minutes ago
What are you talking about? We've never had one of those!
Mar '11
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
If the Committee finds Holder in Contempt then it goes to the full House. If the full House finds Holder in Contempt it is turned over the US Attorney for the District of Columbia for prosecution.
Dec '10
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
Jager
If the Committee finds Holder in Contempt then it goes to the full House. If the full House finds Holder in Contempt it is turned over the US Attorney for the District of Columbia for prosecution. · 9 minutes ago
Doesn't this guy report to AG Holder?
Jan '11
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
We're in Nixon-territory ... at least on the government side. There is no Woodstein on the media side, so it won't seem to be such a big deal.
Makes you wonder how Watergate became Watergate; the government's stalling and incompetence is about the same, but without the media, there's no Watergate here. So how much of Watergate was Nixon, and how much of it was the media?
Dec '11
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
The President and Attorney General Holder have contempt for Congress, whether Congress returns the favor is still up in the air.
Mar '11
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
Foxman
Doesn't this guy report to AG Holder? · 1 minute ago
Unfortunately, Yes.
Dec '11
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
I for one am starting to "see through" this administration's transparency.
May '12
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
KC Mulville: We're in Nixon-territory ... at least on the government side. There is no Woodstein on the media side, so it won't seem to be such a big deal.
Makes you wonder how Watergate became Watergate; the government's stalling and incompetence is about the same, but without the media, there's no Watergate here. So how much of Watergate was Nixon, and how much of it was the media? · 9 minutes ago
The watergate story played out for over two years before it came to a head. You also had Mark Felt, an insider, leaking like crazy to keep the story alive. If an insider starts to leak more stuff, and there really is something damning in the documents being withheld, I could see this taking off.
Jan '11
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
Just a passing observation - Obama is trying to make a campaign based on accusations that the Republicans won't cooperate with him.
How ironic (and revealing) that we now have a case where it's the White House's intransigence that is so plainly on display.
Sep '10
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
Alas, I think this goes nowhere. I am interested in only one thing, the documents allude to a large number of prosecutions linked to this policy. I think it would be terribly interesting to have a list of how many prosecutions and what the charges were. What order of magnitude is "a lot".
Jun '10
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
If Obama wasn't involved in any of this, how can he invoke executive privilege?
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
There is such an inconsistency between the administration's argument that this was a rogue, low-level operation and invoking exec privilege.
I always thought Fast & Furious was bad. Now I'm wondering just how bad.
Jul '11
Re: A Contempt Vote For Holder
When someone like Holder says unprecedented and extraordinary over and over then you know he's referring to a cover up.