Eric Holder: Worst AG Ever? - Page 12 - Politics and Economics

NewOldGuy · 06-26-2012, 03:22 AM

Not the worst ever but he sux. He considers his main job doing whatever he can to help O's reelection by hook or crook, and **** enforcing the law, that's not important.

Just today when SCOTUS ruled that Arizona can continue verifying immigrant status when law enforcement stops/detains someone, Holder said within a couple hours, sorry, we are cutting off your database access to verify that anymore. Nah nah.

And getting caught blatantly lying to Congress is pretty bad.

ivestartedtocook · 06-26-2012, 04:06 AM

Surprised to see many people downplaying Fast and Furious ITT. Letting thousands of guns walk into mexico without surveilling them violates the Arms Export Control Act (as well as being morally reprehensible), and its clear that the Assistant A.G. Lanny Breuer received memos from the Arizona ATF detailing F & F when they petitioned him for wiretapping powers. Which means he either knew about F & F all along or routinely lends his signature to nat sec memos he doesn't even read. Either way he should be fired.

Obama claiming executive privilege is lol because the administration can't use it to shield criminal actions (violation of the Arms Act, lying to Congress).

There's a great summary of the whole scandal from its beginnings as Wide Receiver here: http://www.volokh.com/2012/06/22/fas...ous-explained/

Also, Holder has been roughly as terrible an AG as Ashcroft and Gonzales were on national security/civil liberty issues.

ErikTheDread · 06-26-2012, 04:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ivestartedtocook

blah

Great avatar.

ErikTheDread · 06-26-2012, 04:55 AM

Seriously though, worst ever? Are memories so short? Holder is a piker.

gusmahler · 06-26-2012, 07:14 AM

The case for Holder being worst is that he's continuing all the bad things that people thought Bush's AGs did (indef detentions, etc.), but goes further by sending 2000 guns to Mexican drug lords.

dinopoker · 06-28-2012, 02:19 AM

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.co...furious-truth/

Pretty complete report on a lot of the details of F&F. After reading it I'm not really sure what the scandal is. Seems like the ATF agents couldn't stop a lot of the guns because the people buying and transporting them weren't, you know, breaking any laws (or at least any that anyone cared about).

It also seems like a lot of the so-called scandal came about because of internal politics and squabbling in the Phoenix ATF office. Hardly seems worthy of a congressional investigation...

Ashington · 06-28-2012, 10:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dinopoker

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.co...furious-truth/

Pretty complete report on a lot of the details of F&F. After reading it I'm not really sure what the scandal is. Seems like the ATF agents couldn't stop a lot of the guns because the people buying and transporting them weren't, you know, breaking any laws (or at least any that anyone cared about).

It also seems like a lot of the so-called scandal came about because of internal politics and squabbling in the Phoenix ATF office. Hardly seems worthy of a congressional investigation...

Came here to post this. Some highlights:

Quote:

Ten days after the meeting with Hurley, a Saturday, Jaime Avila, a transient, admitted methamphetamine user, bought three WASR-10 rifles at the Lone Wolf Trading Company in Glendale, Ariz. The next day, a helpful Lone Wolf employee faxed Avila's purchase form to ATF to flag the suspicious activity. It was the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, so the agents didn't receive the fax until Tuesday, according to a contemporaneous case report. By that time, the legally purchased guns had been gone for three days. The agents had never seen the weapons and had no chance to seize them. But they entered the serial numbers into their gun database. Two of these were later recovered at Brian Terry's murder scene.

Cliffs: The guns that killed the agents that started this investigation were already gone by the time the ATF knew about the sale.

Quote:

On June 1, Dodson used $2,500 in ATF funds to purchase six AK Draco pistols from local gun dealers, and gave these to Fernandez, who reimbursed him and gave him $700 for his efforts. Two days later, according to case records, Dodson—who would later testify that in his previous experience, "if even one [gun] got away from us, nobody went home until we found it"—left on a scheduled vacation without interdicting the guns. That day, Voth wrote to remind him that money collected as evidence needed to be vouchered within five days. Dodson e-mailed back, his sarcasm fully restored: "Do the orders define a 'day'? Is it; a calendar day? A business day or work day….? An Earth day (because a day on Venus takes 243 Earth days which would mean that I have plenty of time)?"

The guns were never recovered, the case was later closed, and Fernandez was never charged. By any definition, it was gun walking of the most egregious sort: a government agent using taxpayer money to deliver guns to bad guys and then failing to intercept them.

Cliffs: The whistleblower personally bought and sold some guns to a person he was investigating. Some ommitted background is that it was authorized by someone else while his supervisor was on leave. Then the whistleblower's supervisor objected, then that guy's boss approved that sale.

Quote:

As Voth waited for the police, he checked his e-mail and found an anonymous threat, sent minutes earlier: "You God-damned stupid 'Yes-Man' who does not have either the morals, or the intelligence, to realize that allowing this 'Fast and Furious' operation would result in unnecessary, unjustified deaths: MAY YOU EAT **** AND DIE." Later his wife found a strange car outside their house and an angry post on the Internet listing their home address. Voth confidentially shared his concern about that post in a meeting with two senior ATF officials, only to find an account of the meeting on the Sipsey Street blog within 24 hours.

The ATF's office of operations security investigated the threats to Voth. A confidential report on March 29, 2011, concluded, "ATF 'insiders' are the number one threat to GS Voth and his family." The report cited "at least six individuals," whom it did not name, who had "personal agendas to undermine the credibility of ATF supervisors and members of management as retribution for [Voth's] operational shortcomings." The report cited the two blogs and concluded that "the malicious intent of insiders" had led directly to Voth's becoming the target of a "nation-wide…libel campaign."

Cliffs: The whistleblower's supervisor reported personal safety concerns (threats and people at his home) to his supervisors. That conversation then popped up on the same blog that originally pushed the story that helped instigate his concerns about his personal safety. Investigation by ATF internal security determined 6 ATF insiders were a threat to him.

krmont22 · 06-28-2012, 04:46 PM

And that is.

||.||.|| · 06-28-2012, 05:08 PM

House Holds Eric Holder in Contempt

rjoefish · 06-28-2012, 05:22 PM

Found in contempt and now nothing else happens. Criminal contempt won't go anywhere and they lose their ability to go after civil contempt in January.

seattlelou · 06-28-2012, 05:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rjoefish

Found in contempt and now nothing else happens. Criminal contempt won't go anywhere and they lose their ability to go after civil contempt in January.

They are voting on civil contempt right now.