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American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Holder withholding Fast & Furious docs

Hundreds of dead Mexicans, and one American, but HOLDER BEGS COURT TO STOP DOCUMENT RELEASE ON FAST AND FURIOUS

Judicial Watch had filed, on June 22, 2012, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious and “specifically [a]ll records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012.”

The administration has refused to comply with Judicial Watch’s FOIA request, and in mid-September the group filed a lawsuit challenging Holder’s denial. That lawsuit remains ongoing but within the past week President Barack Obama’s administration filed what’s called a “motion to stay” the suit. Such a motion is something that if granted would delay the lawsuit indefinitely.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that Holder’s and Obama’s desire to continually hide these Fast and Furious documents is “ironic” now that they’re so gung-ho on gun control. “It is beyond ironic that the Obama administration has initiated an anti-gun violence push as it seeking to keep secret key documents about its very own Fast and Furious gun walking scandal,” Fitton said in a statement. “Getting beyond the Obama administration’s smokescreen, this lawsuit is about a very simple principle: the public’s right to know the full truth about an egregious political scandal that led to the death of at least one American and countless others in Mexico. The American people are sick and tired of the Obama administration trying to rewrite FOIA law to protect this president and his appointees. Americans want answers about Fast and Furious killings and lies.”
The only justification Holder uses to ask the court to indefinitely delay Judicial Watch’s suit is that there’s another lawsuit ongoing for the same documents – one filed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Judicial Watch has filed a brief opposing the DOJ’s motion to stay.

As the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was voting Holder into contempt of Congress for his refusal to cooperate with congressional investigators by failing to turn over tens of thousands of pages of Fast and Furious documents, Obama asserted the executive privilege over them. The full House of Representatives soon after voted on a bipartisan basis to hold Holder in contempt.

It’s ironic that one of [O]bama’s executive orders states “the DOJ will release a report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement”.


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Holder plays the race card UPDATED


What took you so long, Eric?
Justice Dept. silent as Holder charges critics with racism

Attorney General Eric Holder accused his growing chorus of critics of racist motivations in a Sunday interview published in the New York Times. When reached by The Daily Caller Monday morning, the Department of Justice provided no evidence to support the attorney general’s claims.

Holder said some unspecified faction — what he refers to as the “more extreme segment” — is driven to criticize both him and President Barack Obama due to the color of their skin. Holder did not appear to elaborate on who he considered to make up the “more extreme segment.”

Eric forgets that thousands of weapons sold to Mexican drug cartels, along with money laundering, have caused hundreds of deaths in Mexico, along with Brian Terry’s death; all of the dead won’t see the color of Eric’s skin.

Meanwhile, the NY Times wants us to believe Eric’s the victim.

Apparently Eric’s an old hand at crying racism. Christian Adams posts,

Of course none of this should surprise anyone who read my book Injustice.  The book opens with rotted racialist views that Holder holds near and dear, very near.  It describes a clipping Eric Holder carried in his wallet for decades – a clipping from Harlem preacher Samuel Proctor.  From Injustice:

For much of his life, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. carried around something peculiar. While most people keep cash, family photos, and credit cards in their wallets, Holder revealed to a reporter in 1996 that he keeps with him an old clipping of a quote from Harlem preacher Reverend Samuel D. Proctor. Holder put the clipping in his wallet in 1971, when he was studying history at Columbia University, and kept it in wallet after wallet over the ensuing decades.

What were Proctor’s words that Holder found so compelling?

“Blackness is another issue entirely apart from class in America. No matter how affluent, educated and mobile [a black person] becomes, his race defines him more particularly than anything else. Black people have a common cause that requires attending to, and this cause does not allow for the rigid class separation that is the luxury of American whites. There is a sense in which every black man is as far from liberation as the weakest one if his weakness is attributable to racial injustice.”

When asked to explain the passage, Holder replied, “It really says that … I am not the tall U.S. attorney, I am not the thin United States Attorney. I am the black United States attorney. And he was saying that no matter how successful you are, there’s a common cause that bonds the black United States attorney with the black criminal or the black doctor with the black homeless person.”

What is surprising that Charlie Savage even published Holder’s racialist gripe at the New York Times.  Two possibilities.  Savage is so in the tank for the administration, something the same article reveals on other points, that he simply did not recognize the volcanic nature of the complaint.  Savage perhaps agrees with it.  The second possibility is that Holder is performing his best Marc Antony act (the Roman, not the singer) and giving himself up as gone.  Nothing stokes the base like a progressive who met his demise because of the perceived evil racial motivation of his enemies.  The two possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

Indeed.

UPDATE,
The race card: The last refuge of a scoundrel.

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Moneywalker, too?

First, Fast and Furious/Gunwalker; now Moneywalker, too?
Gunwalker’s Cousin: ‘Moneywalker’?
Reports surface of the Drug Enforcement Administration laundering cartel drug money.

Operation Fast and Furious and other alleged gunwalking operations run out of the Department of Justice have provided thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, which have been traced to the murders of hundreds of Mexican nationals and two U.S. federal agents. It is a contender for worst political scandal in American history, despite a concerted effort by media to minimize or even apologize for the damage done.

The scope of the scandal may have gotten significantly worse. Reports have emerged that while the FBI and ATF were arming cartels, the DEA was laundering and smuggling millions of dollars in drug profits

Go read it all.

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Justice Dept investigating Puerto Rico police

Front-page article in today’s NY TImes,
Police in Puerto Rico Are Accused of Abuses in Justice Dept. Report

WASHINGTON — In a blistering condemnation of the second-largest police force in the United States, the Justice Department is accusing the Puerto Rico Police Department of a “profound” and “longstanding” pattern of civil rights violations and other illegal practices that have left it “broken in a number of critical and fundamental respects.”

In a 116-page report that officials intend to make public Thursday, the civil rights division of the Justice Department accused the Puerto Rico Police Department of systematically “using force, including deadly force, when no force or lesser force was called for,” unnecessarily injuring hundreds of people and killing “numerous others.”

The report, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, says the 17,000-officer force routinely conducts illegal searches and seizures without warrants. It accuses the force of a pattern of attacking nonviolent protesters and journalists in a manner “designed to suppress the exercise of protected First Amendment rights.”

This also has political overtones, as

The Justice Department began the investigation in part due to complaints by the American Civil Liberties Union.

I must clarify that my uncle, now deceased, was a police officer in Puerto Rico, so I am aware of the pressures police officers face in an overpopulated island, as they are both understaffed and under huge pressures from the ongoing drug traffic in and through the island.

And my inner skeptic also surfaces when reading about “killing numerous others”. How many?

There’s also the political repercussions, which come to mind when finding this article on the front page of the New York Times:
Recently the Justice Department has been notoriously biased in its hiring. Luis Fortuño, the current governor, is a staunch Republican, who has implemented drastic steps to improve the local economy – with Puerto Rico’s economy rating higher than that of Spain, Brazil, or Mexico’s. In fact, of all Latin American economies, only Chile is rated more competitive than Puerto Rico’s.

It wouldn’t be the first time a damning human rights report could be used for political reasons.

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Gunwalker: Will the Justice Department be held to account for arming lethal Mexican cartels?

Bob Owens asks, ‘Gunwalker’ Under Fire
Will the Justice Department be held to account for arming lethal Mexican cartels?

To date, the ATF operation, which encouraged gun shops in the American southwest to sell weapons to suspected criminals and let them carry the weapons across the border, has resulted in an estimated 150 Mexican law enforcement officers and soldiers shot with ATF-supplied weapons. While the theory behind the plot was different, the end result is no more deplorable than Iran’s arming of Iraqi terrorists.

At least two American law enforcement officers have been murdered with ATF weapons as well. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed with “Gunwalker” firearms in Arizona, while ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata was killed in an ambush in Mexico with a gun the ATF allowed to be sold to a cartel gun smuggler in Dallas.

The damning evidence that the U.S. Department of Justice agency is a major supplier of cartel weapons will go in front of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this week, in what could be a damning indictment of the ATF’s senior leadership and Eric Holder’s leadership of the Department of Justice.

Attorney General Holder has apparently ordered the DOJ to fight Congressional oversight, with the DOJ and ATF ignoring seven letters and a subpoena from the committee. Neither Holder nor ATF Director Ken Melson will answer questions — which may lead to them being held in contempt of Congress.

Owens also touches on the 90% fallacy.
Go read every word.
(h/t Instapundit)

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Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani acquitted of 280 charges

The criminal terrorist confesses, identifies a witness who sold him the TNT, and a US Court acquits him of 280 charges:
Detainee Acquitted on Most Counts in ’98 Bombings

The first former Guantánamo detainee to be tried in a civilian court was acquitted on Wednesday of all but one of more than 280 charges of conspiracy and murder in the 1998 terrorist bombings of the United States Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
…
The defendant, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, 36, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings and property. He was acquitted of four counts of conspiracy, including conspiring to kill Americans and to use weapons of mass destruction.

This is an outrage.

PowerLine

Failure proved not only to be an option, it proved to be a predictable outcome. And failure has become a defining feature of the Obama administration.

JOHN adds: This case illustrates very well the foolishness of according civilian jury trials to captured terrorists. Ghailani is undoubtedly guilty; indeed, he confessed long ago. But the appropriate treatment of a captured terrorist, with respect to whom obtaining information about potential future attacks is paramount, is entirely different from the appropriate treatment of a garden-variety criminal. Andy McCarthy saw the potential for this unjust result shortly after the trial began:

[B]oth sides have adjusted their presentations to the civilian justice system rules that, as I’ve been noting in recent columns (including today’s), have resulted in the suppression of key evidence against the defendant.

I imagine this must infuriate people — it still infuriates me after 25 years in the biz. Here you have Ghailani: he has confessed to the bombings; he continued to be a top al Qaeda operative (even a bin Laden bodyguard) for years afterwards, until his capture in 2004; and he not only bought the TNT used in Dar es Salaam, but identified whom he got it from — a witness who corroborates his confession and is prepared to testify. Yet, because of a court ruling and DOJ concerns about opening up the interrogation can of worms, defense lawyers know the jury will learn none of this information. So what happens? Ghailani’s lawyer opens the case by telling jurors that, in 1998, his client was a babe in the woods who was never a member of al Qaeda, never “agreed or signed on to” bin Laden’s edicts to kill Americans; and, in his naivete, was duped by a friend into buying a truck he had no idea would be used by terrorists to bomb an embassy. The lawyer looked the jury in the eye and said, Ghailani “is not simply presumed innocent. He is innocent.”

Having failed to convict Ghailani on more than a single count, the administration can only hope for a substantial sentence. Absent that, they presumably will continue to hold him indefinitely, much as they are holding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, thus demonstrating the essentially sham nature of the proceeding that has just concluded. The Obama administration is truly a ship of fools. Some are already speculating that this disaster will be the occasion for Eric Holder to step down as Attorney General. I have no idea whether he is on the way out or not, but if so, Republicans in the Senate should question his replacement closely about Holder’s politicizing of the Department of Justice, and should extract whatever commitment they can from his successor not to pursue the same course.

Hugh Hewitt:

Today’s travesty of justice can be laid at the feet of President Obama, Attorney General Holder and the five justices who have systematically destroyed every attempt by the Congress and President Bush to create a coherent system of military tribunals for terrorists.

224 innocents were killed by this terrorist, including 12 Americans.  They will never receive justice because of the absurd legal theories of a small group of justices and the refusal of Barack Obama and Eric Holder to demand of their left-wing colleagues inthe Congress a continued insistence on military tribunals.

Time for Holder to go.

UPDATE,
Welcome, Public Secrets readers!

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Andrew McCarthy says “no”

An extraordinary article by Andrew McCarthy, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last year.

McCarthy was in charge of the prosecution of the first World Trade Center attack, an experience he described in his book Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad. He was invited to attend a Department of Justice meeting of the Detention Policy Task Force this week, and he declined. Here’s why:

Saying No to Justice
Why I declined to meet with the President’s Detention Policy Task Force.

From my perspective, though, I’m a lawyer who’s been asked to give advice to the government by an administration that says such advice could lead to criminal investigation and professional discipline. And although the advice I would give is firmly rooted in the laws of war, and was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in the 2004 Hamdi decision, this administration regards such detention as running afoul of the rule of law. Thus, as I wrote to the attorney general:

Given your policy of conducting ruinous criminal and ethics investigations of lawyers over the advice they offer the government, and your specific position that the wartime detention I would endorse is tantamount to a violation of law, it makes little sense for me to attend the Task Force meeting. After all, my choice would be to remain silent or risk jeopardizing myself.

The second reason for declining the Justice Department’s request is that the exercise known as the “President’s Detention Policy Task Force” is a farce. The administration has already settled on a detainee policy: It is simply going to release trained jihadists. Holder said as much in his Germany speech. In the irrational world he inhabits, the existence of Guantanamo Bay, where dangerous terrorists cannot harm anyone, is more of a security threat than jihadists roaming free, plotting to menace and murder us. That’s why the administration just released Binyam Mohammed, who conspired with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla to execute post-9/11 bombings in American cities. That’s why Holder will soon announce (perhaps as early as today) that the Chinese Uighur detainees — who’ve been affiliated with a designated terrorist organization and who’ve received paramilitary training at al-Qaeda camps — will not only be set free in the United States but will, according to National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, subsist on the support of the American taxpayer.

For all their talk about “the rule of law,” President Obama and Attorney General Holder have to know this policy is illegal. In 2005, Congress provided in the REAL ID Act that aliens who’ve been affiliated with a terrorist organization or who’ve received paramilitary training (which has been a staple of virtually every jihadist plot against the United States) are excludable from the United States. Moreover, even if the administration were not riding roughshod over federal immigration law, it is endangering the American people. The sophistry required to believe that having people who want to kill us locked up is more perilous than loosing them on civilian populations is so absurd it nearly defies description.

To satisfy his antiwar base and to put paid to commitments offered by his top campaign advisers (like Eric Holder), President Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay within a year, despite having no plan for what to do about the terrorists there, many of whom cannot be tried under the standards of the civilian justice system. Military proceedings are anathema to the administration — many of whose lawyers either represented the Gitmo detainees or come from firms that did. (Holder’s former firm, for example, brags on its website that it represents detainees in their wartime lawsuits against the American people.) And the administration is evidently not very interested in exploring novel systems of preventive detention, such as my proposal for a “national security court,” which would require extensive legislative work. Instead, the Obama policy is simply to release our enemies — knowing many are certain to return to the jihad — if that’s what it takes to comply with the president’s promise to close Gitmo by January.

Consequently, the President’s Detention Policy Task Force is not an effort to arrive at the best counterterrorism policy. It is an effort to justify a bad policy that has already been made — to be able to tell the American people that this suicidal approach was arrived at in consultation with experienced terrorism prosecutors and national-security officials.

You must read the entire article. While you’re at it, also read his excellent book.

UPDATE
The full text of the letter.

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