Recently, there have been calls for Eric Holder, the Attourney General of the United States, to resign his office amid a number of scandals. I think we should discuss the matter here, since obviously the Dope is so full of hyper-intelligent and amazingly handsome people.
The first controversy, though not the one which sparked the issue now, came from the New Black Panther case. The facts aren’t much in dispute: several members of the New Black Panther party showed up outside a voting area and acted in a disturbingly intimidating manner, though it evidently didn’t change the outcome noticably. Still, it was a violation and was brought to the Justice Department. Holder cancelled the investigation for lackof evidence, and there it might have stayed. However, a Republican resigned from his office there in protest, saying the decision was motivated instead by a refusal of the Administration (and Holder in particular) to prosecute minorities. This was then supported by the Christopher Coates, his supervisor and former ACLU lawyer, who reported sopme disturbing news directly to Congress - and defied the Justice Department, which tried to prevent him from testifying. I can’t confirm it, but I believe Coates was a registered Democrat.
But alright, maybe Holder stretched things a little, but at least no harm was really done in the case, so fine. I don’t know that I would hound him from office for it, though I think it shows poor judgement.
The second case is less forgivable for several reasons.
Project Gunrunner was a semi-secret program by the ATF to track gun purchases by suspected criminals operating outside the US. That is, when the agency had enws of such an event, they would contact Mexico (in this example), track the shipment, and then watch where the guns went. Gunrunner is legitimate, raised no questions from Mexico which is where a lot fo the “action” was.
Fast and Furious was a program started under Gunrunner in 2009, and was much less responsible. In this case, the agency actively purchased guns and funneled them deliberately to Mexican drug cartels. Thus far, it’s at least 2000 firearms, which have been used in over two hundred separate crimes. Mexican officials were not informed, and have lodged a protest. The arms ranged from pistols to AK-47’s (and I hope to God they weren’t fully automatic).
The program only came to light when a U.S. border patrol agent was murdered on the job with a a gun, purchased by the government and handed over to people known to traffic with the cartels. Worse yet, the program doesn’t seem to have any clear purpose. Guns were shoved out, but with little tracking. They weren’t observed or monitored, and the agency didn’t follow-up with arrests of smugglers or work with Mexican authorities to nab the cartel leaders.
But fine. Maybe Holder didn’t know. That’s what he’s been saying all along. That’s what he testified to before Congress.
Well, no. We have documented evidence that Holder knew of the program early on and approved it. His story then changed to, “I didn’t really know what it was,” but that was beginning to look extremely shaky in light of the many briefings held with top Justice department officials. Now he seems to simply be accusing people of conspiring against him or something.
Short version: if he didn’t knopw, it was because he didn’t want to know, and he lied under oath to Congress. Get this man out of there.