Obama Tacitly Admits He Was Involved in Fast & Furious

In Feb 2011 the DoJ sent a letter to Congress denying they had allowed assault weapons to be sold and walked into Mexico. This letter was retracted 10 months later. The documents being requested are internal DoJ communications related to this retraction. It has nothing to do with communications with the President and therefore nothing to do with executive privilege.

http://oversight.hou...-FACT-SHEET.pdf

and at the same time the DoJ was denying the use of this tactic, they were in Mexico advocating for it:

It's also interesting the media keeps calling this a "botched" operation when it went exactly as designed.

 

gunwalking under Bush

650 guns sold to straw purchasers

majority of them lost in Mexico

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal

2006–2007: Operation Wide Receiver and other probes


The suspicious sale of AR-15s led to Operation Wide Receiver.[23]
The first known ATF "gunwalking" operation to Mexican drug cartels, named Operation Wide Receiver, began in early 2006 and ran into late 2007. Licensed dealer Mike Detty informed the ATF of a suspicious gun purchase that took place in February 2006 in Tucson, Arizona. In March he was hired as a confidential informant working with the ATF's Tucson office, part of their Phoenix, Arizona field division.[23] With the use of surveillance equipment, ATF agents monitored additional sales by Detty to straw purchasers. With assurance from ATF "that Mexican officials would be conducting surveillance or interdictions when guns got to the other side of the border",[24] Detty would sell a total of about 450 guns during the operation.[22] These included AR-15s, semi-automatic AK-pattern rifles, and Colt .38s. The vast majority of the guns were eventually lost as they moved into Mexico.[7][23][25]
At the time, under the Bush administration Department of Justice (DOJ), no arrests or indictments were made. After President Barack Obama took office in 2009, the DOJ reviewed Wide Receiver in September 2009[26] and found that guns had been allowed into the hands of suspected gun traffickers. Indictments began in 2010, over three years after Wide Receiver concluded. As of October 4, 2011, nine people had been charged with making false statements in acquisition of firearms and illicit transfer, shipment or delivery of firearms.[18] As of November, charges against one defendant had been dropped; five of them had pled guilty, and one had been sentenced to one year and one day in prison. Two of them remained fugitives.[23]
Another, smaller probe occurred in 2007 under the same ATF Phoenix field division. It began when the ATF identified Mexican suspects who bought weapons from a Phoenix gun shop over a span of several months. The probe ultimately involved over 200 guns, a dozen of which were lost in Mexico. On September 27, 2007, ATF agents saw the original suspects buying weapons at the same store and followed them toward the Mexican border. The ATF informed the Mexican government when the suspects successfully crossed the border, but Mexican law enforcement were unable to track them.[4][10]
Less than two weeks later, on October 6, William Newell, then ATF's special agent in charge of the Phoenix field division, shut down the operation at the behest of William Hoover, ATF's assistant director for the office of field operations.[27] No charges were filed. Newell, who was special agent in charge from June 2006 to May 2011, would later play a major role in Operation Fast and Furious.[4][24]

 

Sorry for the late reply as I have been swamped with work.

The article states it explicitly there is no misreading or misinterpretting.

I agree there were more issues than just the contempt vote but the point that Sweet Lou brought up though is factually correct. Holder had made an offer to release documents to head off the contempt vote. Issa didn't accept it.

 

I've never seen the wing-nuts on our BBS get trolled like this. Sam's really gotten under their skin. He's trolling the trollers.

This thread has become a total cesspool from every angle.

 

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77722_Page3.html#ixzz1yWoFUaG9


It's true that House leadership didn't want to have the contempt vote for a long time and that they know there is nothing here, but they do feel immense pressure to try to connect this to the president. I think it will backfire on Congress and cost them in the elections.

 

That is the way it is in the parliamentary systems but the US republican system isn't set up exactly to be that way. Checks and balances wasn't meant to be a function of party but a function of the different branches. To the extent that parties have taken over that function is in some ways an abdication of the duty of each branch of government to function independently of each other.

I would hardly call call it complete support considering that the 2007 Protect America Vote Democrats overwhelmingly voted against it. In the house 181 Democrats voted against with only 41 for. House republicans 186 for with only 2 against. In the Senate 27 Democrats voted no with 17 voting for while 42 Republicans voted for it with only 1 against it. While yes many Democrats went along with it this was a majority of primarily Republicans voting for a Republican sponsored bill supported by a Republican President.

While Rockefeller changed his tune given the vote numbers it is clear that many Democrats didn't.

And I agree with you that there is a lot of hypocrisy from Obama on this. The most I can say to that is that Obama prosecuting the previous Administration would've been a distraction that likely wouldn't have allowed anything else to get done. Further it would create a precedent where the next Admin. goes after the previous one through courts. That would likely make governing take a back seat to prosecuting. Something that I don't think is good for the country .

Actually the Democrats did at least try with Bush. You have to remember Democrats only had the majority in Congress the last two years of Bush's Admin. It also wasn't an overwhelming majority and looking back through the record of congressional votes were frequently blocked by Republican intransigence. Frankly your argument would be the same as saying that Republicans supported the Obama's stimulus act and Health Care Act since those got passed.

Anyway if you are placing your hope on partisanship as a moral check the problem with that though is that it is totally dependent on what party controls the executive and which controls the Legislative. If they are one controls both then your check on executive power doesn't exist if you rely on partisanship.

 

Frankly Mr. Dunbar, we all love how you like to present yourself as reasonable, thoughtful and above the fray, while simultaneously resorting to the same name-calling, discounting tactics as Saul and all the rest.

 

Oy vey, Tevye, sunrise sunset yet your anger remains.

 

I agree they leak stuff to make them good and hide stuff that makes them look bad and if you are going to say that they are hypocritical in that regard I will agree what I am curious about though is then do you want the White House to reveal more or less information? Is your interest in transparency as a principle or is your interest in making Obama look bad?

 

Exactly.

 

Looks like you in fact did taddle and got the principal to stop by with his paddle yesterday, but here we still are on page 12 with no lock.

 

***OFFICIAL REQUEST SUPPLEMENT***

 

I guess that is just the nature of the D & D. Its too bad though this is an important issue and while I may question the motivations of some posters I fully agree this program seemed from the beginning to be a very bad idea with tragic consequences and I find it disturbing that the Admin. isn't coming clean on this and that heads haven't rolled over this.

 

too bad your post is inaccurate.

 

So we had to go through all the denials just to find out, that sure enough the program was started under the Bush administration, and the Obama administration put an end to it.

 

Sam has given up, as I've already stated. He knows he cannot support "his side" in this, so he's attempting to distract others and troll. I've been ignoring his posts, as they do not further the discussion of the topic at hand.

 

Good morning sunshine!