ATF Project Gunrunner

Prior to his appointment as AG for AZ, Burke was a senior aide to Janet Napolitano at Homeland Security. Burke had also worked for Napolitano when she was the federal AG for AZ.

Given Burkes closeness to Napolitano; its a stretch to believe she had no knowledge of Operation F&F.
 
Further, it appears your own rules may remove any discretion and require an investigation. As per Rule XI, “Disciplinary Proceedings,” Section 10, “Disciplinary Proceedings Based Upon Conviction of Crime,” at http://www.dcbar.org/inside_the_bar/structure/bar_rules/rule11.cfm
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Of course they will roundfile the complaint. They will decide that since Holder hasn't actually been indicted yet (because the US Attorney has a conflict of interest and refuses to prosecute his boss) he hasn't actually been convicted of anything.

The next step should be for the House to impeach Holder for perjury. It'll never happen.

IMHO, the most likely scenario for some kind of justice to prevail is that Zapata or Terry has friends in high places who get sufficiently disgusted with this whole circus that they decide Holder is a national security risk -- and secretly persuade him to do a Vince Foster. I'm not holding my breath for that one either.
 
Re Al Norris's mention of ethics complaints against Holder being filed with the DC Bar, I too doubt that these complaints will go anywhere, however didn't someone, somewhere mention re such boards that "one can never tell what they might do, given the propwer impetus"?
 
I'll point out the obvious. Holder has not been convicted of any crime, serious or not. The House vote on contempt is not the equivalent of being convicted of a crime. Holder is not required to report the "crime" to the D.C. Bar as the complaint claims. Now, he might be guilty of ethical violations (dishonesty comes to mind) but I certainly would not expect any action unless or until there was a real criminal conviction or some other admission of culpability.
 
I decided to go back to the beginning of this thread and review it.

(This is one long and comprehensive history of the proceedings!)

One prescient quote from Morten Rosenberg jumped out at me from the first day of hearings over a year ago:

the Department of Justice has the power to string out your investigation, refuse to obey it, and then when it's time for contempt...say all you can do is bring a civil action which will extend and delay your constitutional ability to enforce it.
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Chaffetz was on Fox yesterday claiming they've got more witnesses and more evidence, but I'm wondering it this whole thing hasn't just ended with a whimper.
 
Tom Servo: It appears that you are correct. However, the obviously morally corrupt process of the AG and POTUS may favorably affect the election in our favor. I have high hopes, anyway.
 
KYJim said:
I'll point out the obvious. Holder has not been convicted of any crime, serious or not. The House vote on contempt is not the equivalent of being convicted of a crime. Holder is not required to report the "crime" to the D.C. Bar as the complaint claims.
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Congress held a couple of votes and held him in civil contempt and in criminal contempt.

I don't know if that matters.
 
Push coming to shove, I expect that DOJ/Obama et al will shuck and jive their way through this executive privilege, congressional citations business.

That having been said, how it all will effect the elections is anyone's guess. One can of course hope but that's about all the individual can do. As to how good, bad or indifferent Romney, if elected, will be for Second Amendment Rights and other things, that is perhaps the proverbial million dollar question.
 
I'm not so willing to call this as being over just yet as I have a sneaking suspicion that Issa has "cards yet to play" if you will. As a casual observer, this is what I could see happening: Issa and the Republicans have kept this simmering for over a year now and are slowly turning up the heat. It has been claimed several times that there are more witnesses and evidence that has not yet been brought to bear. I would not be surprised in the least if the most damning evidence was brought to bear closer to the election as an "October Surprise" in an attempt to hurt the President's re-election bid.

Now, some will view this as a petty and despicable practice because it reduces genuine tragedy and crime into nothing more that partisan politics. If that were the only reason for the scandal being brought to light, I would agree but there may actually be a very good reason to use it as political ammunition against President Obama. I think we can all agree that if Holder were prosecuted and convicted of anything today, he would likely receive a Presidential pardon after the election when President Obama no longer has to worry about getting re-elected. However, if the Republicans can damage President Obama enough politically to cause him to lose the election and then wait until after Romney is inaugurated to prosecute Holder, justice would be more likely to prevail since Holder would no longer have so many friends in high places.
 
If enough dots can be connected a documentary exposing F+F as a mechanism designed to cause death in Mexico ,with little or no regard for the lives of the Mexican people can be produced.
Lets not forget Mexico was not informed of F+F.
Maybe prosecution is not possible,but infamy is.
 
Nothing effective may be done until the White House has a different party in power. It has been proven that the DOJ has lied to Congress and the American People about this operation. if Obama loses the election you can bet the shredders will be running 24/7 at the DOJ.
 
you can bet the shredders will be running 24/7 at the DOJ.
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The thing that got Nixon was the cover-up, as is the case in so many of these things, it's the various and assorted illegalities associated with a cover up that earn people convictions, ie: destroying evidence, tampering with evidence, witness tampering, perjury, obstruction of justice, etc...

I suppose people have different goals in mind for what they'd like to see.

I'd like to find out if indeed the NRA's accusation is true, that people came up with a scheme to allow guns to get into the hands of cartel members primarily to bolster the idea that guns from U.S gun stores were arming the Mexican cartels - as a prelude to calling for stricter gun control laws.

That is the crux of the issue for me because if that charge is true, an entire agency of the U.S. governement was used (or allowed itself to be used) in a conspiracy to lie to and manipulate the American people.

That, to me is huge. That to me is the most important issue that must be addressed.

If true, all of the people in the conspiracy should be brought to justice so that Fast & Furious is the precedent for what happens when politicians / appointees / federal employees conspire to use the pwoer of the federal government against the American people.

Will any of that happen? Maybe not, probably not. But that is more important to me than whether Barrack Obama gets reelected, or this party or that gets control of the Senate or the House.
 
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The administration claimed that most of the firearms traces coming pout of Mexico were for firearms which originated in the United States and they called for more stringent controls. When it was found that their claims were false they needed to save face, and their scheme, by bolstering the numbers. The solution was to make the numbers match the claim.

<Captain Picard> "Make it so, Number One." </Captain Picard>

<First Officer> "Aye, aye. Right away, Sir." </First Officer>

Guess who's the Captain and who's the First Officer.
 
The thing that got Nixon was the cover-up,...
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Add to that, John Dean's testimony, a democratic congress and two honest to god investigative reporters who had a boss that didn't care for RMN so much. Dean's testimony is what sank Nixon IMO. He could have weathered the others, maybe even the missing 18 minutes, until his 2nd term was over. But an insider who knew the real facts of the coverup and was willing to uphold what little honor he had left by coming forward... history in the making.

I don't know of too many elected and/or appointed officials or bureaucrats in DC that understand the concept of honor, let alone duty or country nowadays. Hopefully there is at least one, but no one seems to be forthcoming.

Sad that. We need a John Dean.
 
Luger carbine said:
I'd like to find out if indeed the NRA's accusation is true, that people came up with a scheme to allow guns to get into the hands of cartel members primarily to bolster the idea that guns from U.S gun stores were arming the Mexican cartels - as a prelude to calling for stricter gun control laws.

That is the crux of the issue for me because if that charge is true, an entire agency of the U.S. government was used (or allowed itself to be used) in a conspiracy to lie to and manipulate the American people.
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I have no proof other than circumstantial, but that was my belief from the moment the news broke, and it didn't take the NRA to convince me. Look at the evidence:

As jimpeel points out, the administration was trying to claim that the Mexican cartels were arming themselves primarily through illegal purchases at American gun stores, but they didn't have data to support the claim.

The administration continues to claim that the "intent" of F&F was to "track" the guns across the border to cartel kingpins. How many ways does this claim NOT make sense?

  • Drug cartel bigshots don't do their own killing. They have "soldiers" for that. So how were these guns supposed to get to the bigshots? And, if they did, how were the Feds going to prove it?
  • The BATFE did NOT inform either their Mexican counterparts or even our own BATFE agents in Mexico that Operation F&F was in progress. Just exactly how could they track (note, they say "track," not "trace") the guns to the kingpins when the people in position to do whatever tracking might be (or probably isn't) possible don't know there are any guns to be tracked?
  • Many of the firearms used in Mexican crimes that have been recovered and traced (not "tracked") to U.S. origins are actually full-auto assault rifles (real assault rifles, not semi-auto sporting rifles with scary back furniture) that could not have been bought by straw buyers in American gun shops. However, they could be (and were) sold to the Mexican government for use by their military and police. The administration doesn't talk about that.
Occam's Razor tells us that the simplest solution is probably the correct solution. Offer another explanation -- ANY other explanation -- that fits the facts as well as the theory that the administration walked the guns to create statistics supporting their claims about the U.S. arming the cartels. I don't think you can possibly come up with any other theory that comes even close to this for adequately fitting the facts.
 
I'd like to find out if indeed the NRA's accusation is true, that people came up with a scheme to allow guns to get into the hands of cartel members primarily to bolster the idea that guns from U.S gun stores were arming the Mexican cartels - as a prelude to calling for stricter gun control laws.
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Well, to my mind the only two possible explanations for F&F are either the NRA's accusations, or an incredible degree of stupidity within DOJ. To understand this, let's look at the history prior to F&F.

The precursor to F&F was Operation Wide Receiver which was undertaken during the Bush (43) Administration. Key differences between Fast & Furious and Wide Receiver are than "walked" guns from WR had tracking devices installed in them and WR was coordinated with the Mexican Gov't. WR was a failure because the cartels discovered and removed the tracking devices and thus the "walked" guns were lost. WR was shut down in 2007 due to the "walked" guns being lost.

F&F, on the other hand, did not begin until 2009 after the Obama administration had taken over. Rather than attempt to find better ways of tracking the guns and coordinating with the Mexican Gov't, the ATF under the new administration decided to abandon the two attributes of WR that allowed the guns to be tracked at all.

Now, I fail to see how anyone of even moderate intelligence can think that repeating a failed sting operation without any attempt to track the contraband will work any better than the original operation, or even as well for that matter. While government bureaucrats aren't exactly known as shining beacons of genius, I have a hard time believing that so many people so far up the proverbial food chain could be so abjectly stupid.

Add to the fact that both Secretary of State Clinton and Attorney General Holder called for gun control due to violence in Mexico in early 2009 and were "hushed" about the issue by the administration, the famous quote of former Chief of Staff (and current mayor of Chicago) Rahm Emmanuel "never let a good crisis go to waste", and the allusion by the President that new gun control efforts were in the works (though he characteristically failed to mention specifics) and I think that the true intent of F&F becomes fairly obvious.

The problem is, intent is an extremely difficult thing to prove. Unless evidence of someone very high up in the administration or DOJ specifically stating that F&F's goal was to drum up public support for gun control can be produced (unlikely), then the President, Attorney General, Secretary of State, and Secretary of Homeland Security all still have a certain degree of plausible deniability.
 
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