Eric Holder's False Testimony Warrants Impeachment Posted 06:59 PM ET
Scandal: For incompetence alone, Attorney General Eric Holder should resign in the wake of the illegal "Fast and Furious" gunrunning scandal. But fresh news that he knew of it and is covering it up warrants impeachment.
In the latest Friday night document dump — news released as to minimize its scandalous impact on the White House — congressional investigators learned that Attorney General Holder knew all along that a gun his Justice Department intentionally let fall into the hands of Mexico's cartels was used to murder U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry on Dec. 15, 2010.
Holder must have known right away because his Deputy Chief of Staff Monty Wilkinson received an email from then-Arizona U.S. Attorney General Dennis Burke telling him just that: "The guns found in the desert near the murder(ed) BP officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about — they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store."
According to the Daily Caller, the emails also showed that Wilkinson then "alerted" Holder about the killing of the U.S. agent.
Since then, Wilkinson has taken the Fifth in congressional testimony and told investigators, "I don't recall," while the Justice Department on Monday declined to give any answer to the press about what Holder knew and when he knew it.
This is classic coverup behavior — late-night document dumps, officials taking the Fifth, "I don't recall" excuses — the likes of which we haven't seen since the Nixon and Clinton years.
Along with the false testimony that Holder gave last year to congressional investigators including Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, this never-ending case can only get worse as the damning evidence piles up.
It leaves one question: How far does this have to go before the Obama administration decides Holder should be held accountable? Holder should resign his office immediately because the drip, drip, drip of evidence suggesting he knew all along is grounds enough.
Instead, Holder's gotten more evasive as his involvement grows ever more obvious. That in turn is creating a growing sense that culpability and complicity for Fast and Furious extends a lot further up the chain of command than Holder.
That's serious stuff, no matter where the buck stops.
Operation Fast and Furious was a Frankenstein-like government operation that deputized the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to pressure U.S. gun dealers to sell weapons to suspected Mexican cartel operatives and their surrogates.
The idea nominally was to "trace" where the guns went. But in reality, it was meant to raise public support for gun control as the violence in Mexico, fueled by U.S. guns, boiled over.
As a result, more than 2,000 U.S. weapons were permitted to flow unchecked into the hands of Mexico's seven deadly cartels. Not surprisingly, they didn't just turn these guns on each other, but on innocent bystanders in that country and right back over the border to targets in the U.S.
The Mexican government, fighting for its life against these monsters, had no knowledge of the operation and has very reasonably demanded an apology.
But worst of all, the weapons were used to kill U.S. lawmen — not just Terry, whose case was named in the documents, but quite possibly ICE agent Jaime Zapata, who was killed by cartels in Mexico shortly thereafter.
Do the ends justify the means here? Did Holder and his White House masters really think it was worth losing a few U.S. lawmen if it meant gaining public support for the idea of gun control in the U.S.? Are they that politically venal?
Unfortunately, the failure of the White House to hold anyone accountable points to just such a conclusion. Either Holder should resign or be impeached, or someone in the White House should. Either way, Fast and Furious is a criminal disgrace. |
