The House Oversight Committee has settled the 2012 contempt case against the DOJ over the “Fast and Furious” gun-running incident this month.
The decision to settle a case that stained the supposedly scandal-free Obama administration came just hours after the House Judiciary Committee decided to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for redacting parts of the Mueller report. More on that curious timing in a minute…
First it’s important to note the difference in the two contempt votes because they are not the same at all. Bill Barr was held in contempt by Democrats for not revealing identifying grand jury information from the Mueller Dossier to Congress. Bill Barr wasn’t stamping his feet and defying Congress by refusing to reveal this information. It’s the law.
Personal identifying details about grand juries are secret. We can’t know that information so that grand jury members can’t be publicly doxed, threatened, vilified or murdered by the media, angry Hillary voters or Rashida Tlaib’s relatives. But Democrats don’t care about any of that.
Democrats took a politicized cheap shot at the GOP by voting to hold AG Barr in contemtp. It was essentially a revenge vote against Republicans for their legitimate Contempt of Congress vote against Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder.
The case all started when Republicans were denied documents about Operation Fast and Fuirous by then AG Eric Holder. Back then Republicans were in the majority and had the clout to try to figure out what happened in the botched operation. But Democrats are in the majority now, and they are not bothered when cops get killed- so never mind.
According to The Daily Caller, “[…] court documents, settlement negotiations first began January 2017 during the 115th Congress. By March 7, 2018, the Justice Department and the Oversight Committee signed a conditional settlement agreement with certain conditions, which included that the court would vacate certain rulings at issue on remand. However, the court ruled last October that it would not vacate the rulings.”
The settlement includes a stipulation that “the Oversight Committee will take the necessary steps to dismiss its appeal with prejudice in Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the United States House of Representatives v. Barr, No. 16-5078 (D.C. Cir.), marking the termination of all civil litigation between the parties arising out of the complaint filed by the Committee.”
The case stems back to a 2010 incident over which former AG Holder was held in contempt over a gun-tracking effort by the Obama administration. It was a sting operation intended to provide guns to Mexican drug cartels so that the guns could be tracked. What could go wrong? To make a long story short, the guns that the Obama administration provided to criminals south of the border were used to kill two American border patrol agents.
Who would have thought that providing Mexican drug gangs with weapons could lead to American border patrol agents being killed?
Holder was slapped with two charges of contempt- one criminal and one civil- for refusing to turn over documents on the “Fast and Furious” “gun-walking” initiative. The criminal contempt charge never made it to the prosecution stage – since that would be the job of the Attorney General- and Eric Holder WAS the Attorney General at the time. Isn’t that adorable?
The civil charge had been litigated over the years between 2012 and now. That too has been vaporized in this new deal house Republicans are making with the devil.
The charges were a result of Holder’s testimony to Congress in which he said that he had no knowledge of the “Fast and Furious” gun-walking program until just a few weeks before he was called to testify. However, leaked information from the DOJ proved the contrary- that he was, in fact, part of the initiative’s steering committee.
This settlement should never have happened, and the Republicans who had a part in it should be flogged. This was a deal to take the pressure off Barr in exchange for letting one of the Obama administration’s greatest crimes become water under the bridge.
They should take their cues from Barr himself. Barr is not afraid of the bogus contempt charge leveled against him. He knows that he has followed the law as well as his consciousness.
But this shows you how smooth the Democrats really are. They have leveraged the appearance of seriousness of the charge against Barr as a way to wipe away a major blight on Obama’s rotten legacy. This is an election strategy. The Democrats know that their contenders for the 2020 presidential election will be judged according to the reputation of President Obama.
This is all about protecting the gains they made in 2008 and 2012. When Obama was in office, they thought they won Washington forever. But they were wrong- and they are resisting turning over power peacefully.
Now, at a time when the push to destroy gun rights are at peak levels, the gun-related crimes of Barack Obama and Eric Holder are being swept under the rug.
