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Posts tagged ‘Fast and Furious Scandal’
BREAKING: Court Says Obama Admin MUST Turn Over Fast and Furious Documents
http://www.tpnn.com/2014/07/31/breaking-court-says-obama-admin-must-turn-over-fast-and-furious-documents/
July 31, 2014 By
On Thursday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia offered a ruling that will allow Americans greater insight into the Fast and Furious scandal and the Obama Administration that has repeatedly promised to operate as a model of transparent government.Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the government watchdog group Judicial Watch, the court ruled on Thursday that documents that have previously been withheld from Congress under a flimsy pretense of executive privilege must be turned over to Congress.
“Once again, Judicial Watch has beat Congress to the punch in getting key information about another Obama scandal – this time, the Fast and Furious outrage,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “A federal court has ordered the Obama administration to produce information that could, for the first time, provide specific details who in the administration is responsible for Fast and Furious lies to Congress and the American people. This is a battle that put Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, saw Nixonian assertions of executive privilege by Barack Obama, and a hapless Congress in face of all this lawlessness. Finally, we may get some accountability for Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and the countless others murdered as a result of the insanely reckless Obama administration program.”
For over 16 months, the lawsuit has lingered as Judicial Watch pursued the documents. About a year ago, the court rejected the Justice Department’s request for a hold on the lawsuit that would last indefinitely. The Justice Department had maintained that the documents are protected by executive privilege and that the Fast and Furious scandal was still being investigated.Attorney General Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress in 2012 after he refused to cooperate fully with investigations into his involvement in the Justice Department operation that allowed untracked firearms to be funneled to Mexican drug cartels while the Obama Administration condemned violence surrounding the border and attempted to blame law-abiding gun owners and gunshop owners for the violence.
The president saved Holder at the last moment by cloaking his 
official in executive privilege. The Fast and Furious scandal has been obscured by this flimsy pretense ever since.
official in executive privilege. The Fast and Furious scandal has been obscured by this flimsy pretense ever since.The DOJ claims, in addition to other Exemption 5 rationales, at least two distinct forms of executive privilege to justify withholding documents: a “deliberative process” privilege of constitutional dimensions and a “congressional response work-product” privilege.
The Justice Department must now turn over what has been called the “Vaughn Index”- which is an index of “all requested Fast and Furious materials from a June 2012 Judicial Watch FOIA request.”
Judicial Watch’s release clarifies:
A Vaughn index must:
- (1) identify each document withheld;
- (2) state the statutory exemption claimed; and
- (3) explain how disclosure would damage the interests protected by the claimed exemption.”
In ordering the DOJ to provide Judicial Watch the Vaughn index, the Court ruled, “In this circuit, when an agency is withholding documents under exemption claims, courts require that the agency provide a Vaughn index so that the FOIA requester – at a distinct informational disadvantage – may test the agency’s claims.”
The court’s ruling is likely not the last hurdle to finding the truth about the scandal that left American border patrol agent Brian Terry dead. However, it is one step closer to forcing the Obama Administration to reveal to the American people the truth about the government’s complicity in the outrage.
Phony Scandals for a Phony President
By Suzanne Olden / 7 August 2013 / http://clashdaily.com/2013/08/phony-scandals-for-a-phony-president/
Here we go again. Those big old meanies on the right just won’t let it go! You know, those “phony” scandals. Like a dog with too many bones. Except they aren’t phony. People died and freedoms are at stake.
In an address two weeks ago at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, Obama stated: “With an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball,” and then said that the GOP “needs to stop.” Yesterday, he parroted it again saying that the nation is being distracted by “phony” scandals and isn’t keeping focus on middle class economic issues. Let’s not forget that the White House has, in the past, at least acknowledged, and in some cases feigned, outrage at these scandals.
Merriam Webster online dictionary defines “phony” as: not genuine or real: as a (1) intended to deceive or mislead; (2) intended to defraud or counterfeit, arousing suspicion, probably dishonest, having no basis in fact, fictitious, false, a sham, hypocritical or specious.
The scandals, as we all know, are 1) Benghazi; 2) IRS targeting of conservatives; 3) NSA spying on Americans; and 4) DOJ surveillance of US reporters.
Benghazi is a “phony” scandal that didn’t have to be, and four Americans died on September 11, 2012. They didn’t have to die. First, aid could have been given to those at the Embassy before and during the attack. Instead Hillary Clinton ignored warnings, took away security measures that could have protected them or brought everyone there home During the attacks aid could have gotten there, instead a “stand down” order was issued and the President went to bed. But Obama had an election to win, so he tried to turn it to his advantage by blaming it on an anti-Muslim video instead of calling it the terrorist attack it was. Then he sent Susan Rice to lie for him. Now there are reports of the CIA intimidating and threatening witnesses who were going to testify. Hey, he used the IRS, why not the CIA?
About the IRS … Here’s Obama’s statement from May 15, 2013: “I’ve reviewed the Treasury Department watchdog’s report, and the misconduct that it uncovered is inexcusable. It’s inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives.”
Sound like someone who thinks it’s a “phony” scandal? Representative Darrell Issa has been a truth seeker on this issue. He has been holding hearings, one of which has borne out the closest ties to the White House yet. William Wilkins, Chief Counsel for the IRS and appointed by Obama, helped develop the agency’s guidelines for reviewing “tea party” cases. Now that it’s becoming clearer that the orders have come from, most likely, Obama himself, it’s “phony.”
NSA is conducting widespread, untargeted, domestic surveillance on millions of Americans; collecting and keeping records and now working in tandem with the DOJ to do even more record keeping on all of us. When this first broke it was just “collecting phone numbers, nothing more, on people suspected of terrorist ties calling overseas only”, except it wasn’t. Orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (or FISC) direct carriers to provide “on an ongoing daily basis” all call records for any call “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls” and any call made “between the United States and abroad.” What does this actually mean? Carriers must send the NSA a record of every Verizon customer’s call history, including every call made, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other “identifying information” for the phone and call.
Now there’s even more. The DEA has been doing the same thing in tandem with the NSA. They’ve been collecting information from “intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records” and disseminating the data to authorities across the nation to “help them launch criminal investigations of Americans” — supposedly those who are being investigated as drug dealers, but the information they are collecting spreads a much wider net. The Special Operations Division (“SOD”) is handling this and they are made up of a partnership of numerous government agencies including the NSA, CIA, FBI, IRS and the Department of Homeland Security. They are also instructing Agents to lie about the fact that SOD provided the information (because it is highly unconstitutional) and “recreate” a legal timeline in order to get warrants to arrest or search (i.e. perjure themselves).
Reporters were taught a lesson in how the Obama Administration feels about their 1st Amendment rights earlier this year as well. Why? Because they didn’t kowtow to the polishing of Obama’s election year reputation and hold a story to help do that. The reprisal was a secret and massive raid on the records, a data mining effort of phone and internet records of the AP in general and several reporters. Reporter Sharly Attkisson tweeted that people were afraid to call or email her, personally or professionally. Obama’s message to reporters? Do what I say or I will shut you down. Media heard it loud and clear.
What I find renders me almost speechless about this whole thing is that 100% of Americans aren’t outraged. Why aren’t you angry? People died and our freedoms are being threatened by government abuse of power. At best all we see is a decided “yawn” from most Americans. We deserve better … we should demand better and let Obama know that HE is the phony.
Image: Graffiti streetart Cognac; author: User:Chourmo; Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
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