Watch to the end of Anne Marie Buerkle’s questioning of Eric Holder, where he indignantly suggests that he ought to get credit for all the wonderful things that he’s done as Attorney General, and that Buerkle’s pointed question regarding how many more agents would have needed to die before he would take responsibility was beneath the decorum of Congress (via William Jacobson):
Considering the way that Holder and his DoJ have treated Congress’ repeated requests for documentation and information, considering that ATF employees were specifically told not to cooperate with any investigation, considering that there are 300 dead Mexicans who don’t really care about any supposed political agenda involved, considering the despicable way the DoJ has treated Brian Terry’s family, does he really deserve any kind of deference? I don’t think so. College Politico calls Holder’s yammering the Gacy Clown Defense.
Let’s look at the record, though. Among the tactics used in yesterday’s questioning, we had Democrat defenders of the AG continuing to try to confound Fast and Furious with Operation Wide Receiver under Bush. These same defenders then turned around and complained to Chairman Issa when Labrador produced a timeline of Holder excuse-making before Congress that reached back to his promotion of the Marc Rich pardon, on the basis that he hadn’t had time to read the memos that were sent to him when he was an assistant to Janet Reno. One of the jaw-dropping defenses that Holder made about his Justice Department was that he had done away with the partisanship that characterized the Bush years. You can ask J. Christian Adams and other career exiles from the DoJ whether that’s true. He further stated that he was going to track down and punish any leakers—who under other circumstances would be whistleblowers—in the DoJ, though that doesn’t appear to be the case with employees who leaked information in the past to serve the liberal agenda, such as the identities of CIA agents who had interrogated prisoners at Guantanamo to lawyers for the detainees. And the contrast with the apparently fully justified freak-out over Valerie Plame, and the highly partisan hunt to get a conviction against someone in the Bush administration, which yielded Scooter Libby’s conviction for perjury at the hands of Patrick Fitzgerald when Fitzgerald already knew who the culprit was, could not be any starker.
It’s ridiculous now for the people who went ballistic then to complain that investigating a program that resulted in hundreds of deaths is partisan. The only motive for the “botched operation” that anyone’s forwarded, and it’s one that’s borne out by the very partial documentary information that we have, is that it was intended to be used in conjunction with the President’s then-inaccurate claims that 90% of the illegal weapons in Mexico that found their way into the narcoterrorists hands originated in the United States to justify imposing greater restrictions on 2nd Amendment rights. To any such suggestion, as well as to any suggestion of a coverup, Holder expressed outrage and indignation, and invoked the specter of conspiracy theory, but it’s hard to understand how any investigative technique of delayed interdiction could fail to include the element of interdiction. In the case of Fast and Furious, interdiction occurred when murderers left their murder weapons at murder scenes, and they were traced back to straw purchasers.
As for Holder’s DoJ’s many good works for which Holder deserves credit, Yid with Lid recounts some of them for us, here. The New York Post covers the memos sent on the day of Brian Terry’s murder to the AG, which Holder ludicrously argued referred instead to Operation Wide Receiver. Out of all the disgusting dishonesty, yesterday, perhaps the most disgusting was Dennis Kucinich’s, when he argued that the Oversight Committee ought to be more chary of Holder’s reputation, since once tarnished they are difficult to rehabilitate.
Kucinich had just come from a prayer breakfast, he let everyone know, where he prayed for the AG. What about the dead, and their families, Dennis? Why should they care about Holder’s reputation?
Months ago, James Carville stated that Holder should step down, because he hadn’t gone after financiers. Yesterday, a new bomb got dropped on Eric the Red:
A U.S. Justice Department source has told The Daily Caller that at least two DOJ prosecutors accepted cash bribes from allegedly corrupt finance executives who were indicted under court seal within the past 13 months, but never arrested or prosecuted.
The sitting governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, his attorney general and an unspecified number of Virgin Islands legislators also accepted bribes, the source said, adding that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is aware prosecutors and elected officials were bribed and otherwise compromised, but has not held anyone accountable.
The bribed officials, an attorney with knowledge of the investigation told TheDC, remain on the taxpayers’ payroll at the Justice Department without any accountability. The DOJ source said Holder does not want to admit public officials accepted bribes while under his leadership.
That source said that until the summer of 2011, the two compromised prosecutors were part of a team of more than 25 federal prosecutors pursuing a financial crime ring, and at least five other prosecutors tasked to the case were also compromised by the criminal suspects they were investigating, without being bribed.
