No, I can’t really imagine a senario where a Congressional Committee can’t be briefed on the material. They’re briefed on all matter of secret information.
Now you getting your hands on the information through FOIA. Yes.
Did the ATF intentionally allow guns to fall into the hands of Mexican cartels? Fortune mag says no.
The President can’t claim Executive Privilage for a BATFE operation that the President wasn’t somehow involved with. The President can’t claim EP for justice department operations that the Whitehouse wasn’t involved with either. EP protects Presidential knowledge and actions and the people the President was involved with.
The President can only claim EP for F&F if the Whitehouse was involved in the planning OR the operation OR the cover up OR some other part of F&F.
EP doesn’t extend to Holder’s personal problems unless the President was somehow involved in Holder’s personal problems.
Perhaps, perhaps not, I don’t really know. But I’m not making any argument about whether or not Obama is justified. I was just curious if there was any explanation at all that would satisfy Magiver, since he seems convinced there is something “embarrassing” to the Obama administration to be found here.
*Reasons for Claiming Executive Privilege
Historically, Presidents have exercised executive privilege in two types of cases: those that involve national security and those that involve executive branch communications.
National security -
Presidents most often claim executive privilege to protect sensitive military or diplomatic information, which if disclosed, could place the security of the United States at risk. Given the president’s constitutional power as commander and chief of the U.S. Military, this “state secrets” claim of executive privilege is rarely challenged.
Executive branch communication -
Most conversations between presidents and their top aides and advisers are transcribed or electronically recorded. Presidents have contended that executive privilege secrecy should be extended to the records of some of those conversations. The presidents argue that in order for their advisers to be open and candid in giving advice, and to present all possible ideas, they must feel safe that the discussions will remain confidential.*
Thirty days after being published in the Federal Register, executive orders become law. While they do bypass the U.S. Congress and the standard legislative law making process, no part of an executive order may direct the agencies to conduct illegal or unconstitutional activities.
Is Obama claiming that Presidential communications between Obama and Holder or Obama and the justice dept or Obama and the BATFE are a "national security’ issue?
It’s obvious that Obama believes that Obama’s communitcations must remain confidential but what could those communications consist of? Obama says he wasn’t involved in the F&F debacle. By claiming EP, Obama is admitting that he was involved in the F&F debacle.
However Obama was involved with the F&F operation or the cover up, it will prove embareassing to Obama.
No, it simply asserts that other people did. Who claimed that? Since the answer is “nobody”, the article set up a strawman to knock it down right from the very start.
Whatever. It’s his scandal to deal with. He could have dealt with it right from the start but chose this path instead.
I was. A claim of executive privilege in the midst of a scandal, no matter how minor the scandal is, escalates it simply because people think the President is trying to hide something.
[bracketed info added]
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding you, but that claim has been advanced by Darrell Issa and Rush Limbaugh, among others:
From our pal Rush:
Does that change your perception of the political stupidity surrounding this case, or am I missing your point?
No, it just confirms the stupidity of Darrell Issa and Rush Limbaugh. So, let me get this straight- there are people who genuinely believe that Barack Obama and his administration intentionally crated a major international incident for the express purpose of getting domestic gun laws passed? I respectfully submit that if you posted that in the ongoing conspiracy theory discussions now located in the Pit you would be laughed at.
I would accept the idea that Holder, et al., are using this as an opportunity to push for new laws (which, of course, they have- see Holder’s Congressional testimony), but that’s all that is, it’s simply opportunism.
I have not seen any evidence that such a belief is strongly held, even by gun owners who live their lives in mortal fear that Obama will “take their guns away”.
Incidentally, why is Rush Limbaugh someone we should care about? He’s a professional troll. If I were to cite him I’d be dismissed as a loony. Has he ever gotten anything right, about anything?
EDIT: Just a thought: which came first, the absurd conspiracy theory or the Government’s recalcitrance over giving Congress the information they asked for? The one simply feeds the other, you realize.
What? You’ve posted repeatedly that nobody is claiming the exact conspiracy theory that Issa and Limbaugh are claiming. Surely you’re not going to keep calling that a straw man, are you?
Nobody is citing him for accuracy; rather, folks are citing him as an influential conservative who’s making this idiotic claim. I agree that he’s a professional troll, but he’s a very successful professional troll who has an obnoxiously large fan base of people who don’t realize he’s trolling.
I trust the reasons why we should care about Darrell Issa are self-evident :).
Thanks for the links. As stated, I really don’t know what is justified and what is not when it comes to executive privilege and these help. I absolutely do not agree with your assertion that Obama is guilty of something just because he claimed EP, though. Innocent until proven guilty.
Let me ask you then, what do you think could be uncovered that would embarrass Obama?
I’m gonna take a wild stab at it. I’m guessing that somewhere in that pile, some ATF guy said to another ATF guy something to the effect that the bloody massacres in Mexico might move more people to accept more gun control. Bound to be some guys in ATF who favor more gun control, and not ashamed to say so.
Of course, that doesn’t come anywhere near a conspiracy, but it wouldn’t take much to send Congressgit Issa into a screaming shit fit. He’s halfway there already, and he’s not nothing…
Neither the thread title nor the article claims that the president or his administration intentionally armed drug cartels. “Other people” might have done something, but I can only respond to what is in the original post.
Whatever? Really??
Calling something a scandal doesn’t make it a scandal. You are convinced, it seems, that Obama is guilty of something. I’m not convinced he isn’t. But I personally would not claim the former as a given until I saw some evidence to back it up.
I respect your opinion about Nixon, et al. and EP, I’m just not going to get into that. I’m sure some will see the assertion of EP alone as proof of wrongdoing. I find it ironic that one of the tenets of our judicial system, innocent until proven guilty, can be ignored so easily whenever this happens.
I have seen many government scandals erupt over the years, and it strikes me that the two the GOP are hemorrhaging over (Fast and Furious, and Solyndra) are among the most pissant of all time.
Neither reflect well on the administration, but historically speaking they are hardly in the same league with Watergate and the Ollie North Follies.
Republicans truly need to get a life here.
An illegal alien bought the guns used in the death of a border patrol agent.
How is that embarrasing for Obama again?
This is spot-on. Holder should be held responsible for the behavior of the US Attorney’s office, which appears to have been corrupting the investigation from the inside.
The, “fine line between stupid & clever,” thing is this:
- The US Attorney who hamstrung Fast and Furious seems to have been doing exactly what the NRA/militia-movement/minarchist/white-racist-couch-potatoe-revolutionaries in the GOP base want.
- BATFE are hated in some quarters much as Jews were hated by medieval Christians, ever since the Waco fiasco.
- But now NRA-approved policies got a border patrol officer killed, even the GOP want to blame someone.
- Not getting border patrol agents killed means letting BATFE agents do their job.
- GOP officeholders don’t want to admit this for fear of introducing division in the base.
- So in order to avoid this problem, they try to scapegoat the very BATFE program their pet policies undermined, so the base think it happened not because of their own pink WASP asses but because of evil gun-grabbers and racially impure evil Commie mutts like Eric Holder.
Jerks.
This situation kinda reminds me of the old joke about a defense attorney cross examining a witness.
Defense attorney - Mr. Public. Were you in attendance at The Dew Drop Inn, on the night of April 1st?
Mr. Public - Yes, I was.
Attorney - Mr. Public. did you see my client, Mr. Smith, bite off Mr. Baker’s ear?
Mr. Public - No, I did not.
Attorney - Did you see Mr. Smith figthing with Mr. Baker?
Mr. Public - No, I did not.
Attorney - Did you see Mr. Smith and Mr. Baker pushing each other?
Mr. Public - No, I did not.
Attorney - Did you see Mr. Smith and Mr. Baker arguing with each other?
Mr. Public - No, I did not.
Attorney - Mr. Public. You admit that you did not see Mr. Smith bite off Mr. Baker’s ear. You admit that you did not see any interaction between Mr. Smith and Mr. Baker. So why should the court believe you when you say that Mr. Smith did indeed bite off Mr. Baker’s ear?
Mr. Public - Because I saw him spit it out.
That sums up part of this particular situation very well. Mr. Public did see Mr. Obama spit out an EP. The fact that Obama extended EP means that the Obama WH was involved in some aspect of the F&F debacle.
How it was involved has yet to be determined. The Wide Receiver operation was a different operation. F&F was most likely based somewhat on how WR was run but they are two different operations.
BATFE agents witnessed illegal sales of firearms. Gun store owners were ordered to complete the illegal sales. That’s a given. The agents were ONLY lacking authorization, from the justice dept., to arrest the gun buyers. Who, specifically, in the justice dept decided that these lawbreakers should not be arrested? Holder and Obama don’t want you to know.
The firearms were “supposed” to be tracked into Mexico and into the hands of drug cartels. Exactly who, either failed to inform or decided not to inform Mexican authorities that the firearms were entering Mexico? Holder and Obama don’t want you to know.
Is the BATFE, and the other U.S. federal authorities who were involved in F&F, really that stupid or was the intention to allow the Mexican’s to “discover” these firearms in the hands of drug cartel criminals? Mexico would assume that lax U.S. gun laws were responsible for this influx instead of assuming correctly that it was the U.S. justice dept’s refusal to arrest the lawbreakers illegally buying firearms.
By issuing the EP, Obama has tied his fate to Holders.
Sure, it’s possible that Obama was involved in F&F, and by involved I don’t necessarily mean there was any wrongdoing on his part, but I can’t rule that out definitively, either. It’s possible that you are wrong about whether he was justified in claiming EP, and that he has a valid and justifiable reason for doing so. It’s possible that Obama was indeed not justified in claiming EP, but did so thinking that he was justified, and was simply wrong. What is not possible, is to know for sure that any wrongdoing was done by the Obama administration based purely on the fact that he claimed EP. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that what you are saying?
So the Attorney General is a NRA white racist couch potato and the President is protecting him?
No.
The AG may be the “cover for his underlings” type, or just wants to fix things in house rather than suffer the embarrassment of having Congress “fix” things for him. The Phoenix US Attorney is possibly on the take from the mob.
The “potatoes” in question are GOP bloggers and the voters influenced by them; those who want to believe that excessively liberal gun laws are somehow good in a state bordering a foreign country with tighter gun laws.
What is Congress going to fix?