Yesterday, the New York Times added the charge that the DEA has been laundering Mexican drug cartel money in order to learn the financial structure of the organizations to the list of ways agencies of the US government have been aiding murderous thugs in that country, even going so far as to recall the Clinton administration scandal of US covert operations in our neighbor country undertaken without the knowledge or consent of the Mexican government. Calderon has sought US assistance in dealing with the cartels, but once again the nature and scope of Fast and Furious seems to have been kept hidden from Mexican authorities.
Initially, there was considerable uproar from those authorities when Fast and Furious was exposed by whistleblowers in the ATF. At the time, there were officials calling for the executives of that program to be extradited and face justice in Mexico. Either that’s been toned down, or it’s not being much reported anymore. And if it has died down, the quid pro quo that has made the deaths, at minimum, of 300 Mexicans from guns procured by criminals through Fast and Furious somewhat less palatable must be the administration’s attempts to establish a back-door amnesty for many millions of undocumented Mexicans in the United States.
Any money laundering performed by the DEA or any other law enforcement agency in the US requires a specific waiver from Treasury, and it appears that Holder’s DoJ has never applied for those waivers in some of these cases (at PJ Media via Insty). It is also necessary according to the terms of the law to get a specific waiver in the case that the amount being laundered in any transaction exceeds $10 million. According to one of the authors of this, the “Kingpin Law,” DoJ is in arrears in this department as well. Penalties include incarceration for long periods and multi-million dollar fines.
The rub is that Treasury, upon discovering any violations, is supposed to refer the incidents to the DoJ, itself, which is why Mr. Stinebower says that a special prosecutor may have to be appointed to look into this latest example of DoJ lawlessness.
Ling Carter on December 6, 2011 at 1:35 am said:
Are there any crimes the feds haven’t facilitated over the last few years?
(I’m Okay if they left out a few.)
Sejanus on December 7, 2011 at 7:05 am said:
I haven’t heard of anyone illegally removing mattress tags recently, but give Mr. Holder enough time…
J Henry Phillips on December 6, 2011 at 7:52 pm said:
The Bill of Wrongs (Prohibition and Income Tax amendments) continue to crowd the Bill of Rights right out of existence. Perhaps that Amendment written in 1957 would reverse the trend: “And Congress shall pass no laws infringing the freedom of production and trade.”