Drudge finally has this up. If you're a regular member of Joshua's Army, you knew about the copy of wiretap applications and the smoking gun contained within Tuesday, three days ago.
From today's story Drudge is linking to at Roll Call:
In the midst of a fiery floor debate over contempt proceedings for Attorney General Eric Holder, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) quietly dropped a bombshell letter into the Congressional Record.
The May 24 letter to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), ranking member on the panel, quotes from and describes in detail a secret wiretap application that has become a point of debate in the GOP’s “Fast and Furious” gun-walking probe.
The wiretap applications are under court seal, and releasing such information to the public would ordinarily be illegal. But Issa appears to be protected by the Speech or Debate Clause in the Constitution, which offers immunity for Congressional speech, especially on a chamber’s floor.
According to the letter, the wiretap applications contained a startling amount of detail about the operation, which would have tipped off anyone who read them closely about what tactics were being used.
Holder and Cummings have both maintained that the wiretap applications did not contain such details and that the applications were reviewed narrowly for probable cause, not for whether any investigatory tactics contained followed Justice Department policy.
The wiretap applications were signed by senior DOJ officials in the department’s criminal division, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Blanco and another official who is now deceased.
The Roll Call article isn't telling you the whole story.
As I reported last Tuesday, the wiretap applications, a copy of which was given to the oversight committee by a DOJ whistle blower also shows that senior DOJ officials including AG Holder knew back in March 2011 that the February 4, 2011 letter from the DOJ to Senator Chuck Grassley denying that guns were permitted to “walk” into Mexico was totally bogus. That letter, signed by Attorney General Holder, was allowed to stand for nine more months, and it was only withdrawn when a series of e-mails subpoenaed by the committee proved that Holder was lying and that he was briefed far earlier on the program than he claimed to have been during his testimony.
That's called obstruction of justice and perjury.
Even more interesting is that the wiretap applications may not be able to be shielded by the president under executive privilege because they were already submitted to a federal court and these particular documents are already under seal.
That's the real smoking gun Rep. Issa just read into the Congressional Record, and that's what this story isn't quite telling you.
As I've repeated before, there's a trail here that leads right back to the White House.
Remember President Obama's stimulus bill? There's $10 million in funds that were earmarked to fund Fast and Furious. It's in the stimulus bill itself.
How did it get there? The Republicans were all locked out of the room , literally. Who was responsible for getting it into the bill? And whose instructions were they acting on? What did the President know and when did he know it?
I think it's time Congress deposed President Obama and had him answer a few questions, under oath. Just to get him on record.
1 comment:
Interesting to note - -holder is a "nose picker" - -Yuuuuk!
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