Via the Daily Caller, House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa sent a letter to the White House this morning directly challenging its use of executive privilege to obstruct the Fast and Furious investigation. Issa asserted what others have been saying for days now: the executive order suggests that the White House was either involved in some aspect of the Fast and Furious debacle, or the order was unwarranted.
“[Y]our privilege assertion means one of two things,” Issa wrote to the president in a letter dated June 25. “Either you or your most senior advisors were involved in managing Operation Fast & Furious and the fallout from it, including the false February 4, 2011 letter provided by the attorney general to the committee, or, you are asserting a presidential power that you know to be unjustified solely for the purpose of further obstructing a congressional investigation.”
Issa said Obama’s assertion of executive privilege “raised the question” about the veracity of how the “White House has steadfastly maintained that it has not had any role in advising the department with respect to the congressional investigation.”
This makes it clear that the Eric Holder contempt vote scheduled for Thursday isn’t going to be the end of the story, at least not if Issa can help it. Obama’s assertion of executive privilege can be overturned — under certain circumstances — by Congress or the Supreme Court, and Issa seems to be making a preliminary case for that in this letter.
Issa also gave details on the 11th hour “deal” Holder offered him before the committee contempt vote last week:
“He indicated a willingness to produce the ‘fair compilation’ of post-February 4 documents,” Issa wrote to the president. “He told me that he would provide the ‘fair compilation’ of documents on three conditions: (1) that I permanently cancel the contempt vote; (2) that I agree the department was in full compliance with the committee’s subpoenas, and; (3) that I accept the ‘fair compilation,’ sight unseen.”
That deal is a joke — a permanent cancellation of the contempt vote and an agreement that the Department of Justice cooperated fully in exchange for a stack of documents of Holder’s choosing, “sight unseen”? Issa obviously would never accept such an agreement, and Holder had to have known that. Was Holder was trying to give himself some cover by offering a deal that would likely get rejected, so that he could claim Issa was the one who was unreasonable? Either that, or Holder was actually desperate enough to think Issa might go along with it.
Alana, when you reach down to where you're flogging stories from the Daily Caller, you need to straighten up things. n nIssa's been witchhunting this thing nearly as shamelessly as that dutz-head Munro.
They initially said the same things to Woodward & Bernstein. n nMs. Goodman has a really interesting point — why would Holder offer something like that? nAnd why make the point of getting Issa to say that the DoJ was in compliance if he also got a promise to permanently cancel the subponea? Why would Holder *care* what Issa and other Republicans thought of him? n nI think there is something more here — and do not forget about that AK that was fired at the White House. Wanna bet that was one of the F&F AKs that went over the border?
I don't think so, Mike. If there is nothing there, why did POTUS exercise executive privilege? The White House had to know that exercising executive privilege would send this scandal into overdrive, give way to widespread exposure of F&F across media nationally, create an atmosphere of contention and leave the impression of a cover-up involving the White House and POTUS himself. If the calculation in the White House was that they could garner public outrage in the manner that the Lewinski scandal, Ken Starr, and all upset the American people, they are dead wrong. Dead wrong. People thought of the Clinton sex scandals as private matters. F&F is not a private, personal matter for the AG and POTUS. Does not equate.
Everyone in this administration uses one tactic over and over — offer something totally impossible to accept and then try to look hurt for the MSM when they carry the message about obstructionism and Republican rigid ideology. So, yes, "Holder was trying to give himself some cover by offering a deal that would likely get rejected, so that he could claim Issa was the one who was unreasonable …" Besides, it does play with the Democrat base (see some of the comments at Commentary, like claims F&F is a witchhunt while ignoring how the Dems demanded a special prosecutor to investigate the outing of a CIA agent working at the Pentagon). n nThe real question is if enough people are going to stop being fooled all the time, as Lincoln warned, by November 2nd.
Head shake. n nThis administration is a transparently global laughingstock.