{"id":14723,"date":"2012-06-20T13:46:24","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T17:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=14723"},"modified":"2012-06-20T13:46:24","modified_gmt":"2012-06-20T17:46:24","slug":"executive-privilege-means-obama-owns-fast-furious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/14723\/executive-privilege-means-obama-owns-fast-furious\/","title":{"rendered":"Executive Privilege Means Obama Owns Fast & Furious"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today marks a dramatic turn in the Fast and Furious scandal with the Obama White House announcing this morning that the documents sought by House Republicans are protected from disclosure by executive privilege<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For the first time since news broke of the Department of Justice gun-walking fiasco, the President of the United States is claiming an interest in DOJ\u2019s internal deliberations about a program that purposefully armed Mexican drug cartels and ultimately allowed a drug runner to murder a U.S. Border Patrol agent.<\/p>\n

In the short term, the president\u2019s announcement may make House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa\u2019s contempt vote<\/a> closer than it would have been, if some members decide that an executive privilege claim inoculates Holder from punishment.\u00a0 My guess is that Obama\u2019s announcement will embolden Republicans on the committee to go ahead with the contempt vote and give Democrats a talking point after they lose.<\/p>\n

In the long term, today\u2019s executive privilege claim finally elevates Fast and Furious into a surefire campaign topic for the fall.\u00a0 As long as the scandal was defended as a policy decision gone bad \u2013 especially one that was until today linked to the previous Republican administration \u2013 it was unlikely that conservatives would make Fast and Furious into a campaign theme.<\/p>\n

But now that\u2019s changed for two reasons.\u00a0 First, as of today DOJ has rescinded its claim<\/a> that Bush\u2019s Attorney General Michael Mukasey knew about Fast and Furious, thus admitting that the idea and its consequences belong completely to the Obama administration.\u00a0 Second, Obama\u2019s claim of executive privilege means that he is now claiming ownership of the program.<\/p>\n

I suspect that the documents being withheld would make the case for the resignation or impeachment of Eric Holder or another high-ranking DOJ official.\u00a0 Claiming executive privilege helps delay the reckoning, but it opens the door for Mitt Romney and others \u2013 most notably Issa and other congressional investigators \u2013 to ask White House officials directly \u2013 and President Obama indirectly \u2013 about the president\u2019s knowledge, involvement, and approval of Fast and Furious.<\/p>\n

Game on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today marks a dramatic turn in the Fast and Furious scandal with the Obama White House announcing this morning that the documents sought by House Republicans are protected from disclosure by executive privilege. For the first time since news broke of the Department of Justice gun-walking fiasco, the President of the United States is claiming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2033,1193,84,3641,150,1453,2026,498,2847,2645,160],"class_list":["post-14723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-2033","tag-campaign","tag-congress","tag-contempt","tag-darrell-issa","tag-department-of-justice","tag-election","tag-eric-holder","tag-fast-and-furious","tag-guns","tag-mitt-romney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14723"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14732,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14723\/revisions\/14732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}