Now He Owns It

In claiming executive privilege today, President Barak Obama took ownership of the Fast and Furious scandal. He can no longer claim that he didn’t know of it until he learned about it from a news story. If that was the case, there wouldn’t be a need to claim privilege.

For over a year, Representative Darrel Issa has been leading the Congressional investigation into the Obama Administration’s back door attempt to build domestic support for gun control, in which it ran guns to known Mexican drug cartel members. During this time the president has feigned ignorance of the operation, and the attorney general has stonewalled Congressional requests for information.

Heretofore, the administration has spun Operation Fast and Furious as a rogue operation run out of a regional office of the BATFE. In essence, they’ve pleaded, “We were too incompetent to keep control of an operation which funneled weapons to foreign criminals, resulting in the deaths of two Federal law enforcement officers, and hundreds of Mexicans.”

When pressed for documents, Holder has repeatedly claimed that the dog ate his homework.

Things finally came to a head today, when in the shadow of a vote to hold the AG in contempt of Congress, President Obama invoked executive privilege as an excuse to continue withholding them.

I guess Holder can now claim that Obama ate the dog that ate his homework.

Executive privilege is a leftover from the days when we were ruled by a king. It should be invoked only in the direst circumstances, such as when releasing information could endanger national security. It is not appropriate to invoke EP as a means to avoid being held accountable for criminal malfeasance. By doing so, he’s taken ownership of this whole sordid mess.

Obama has shown by his past conduct that he is not averse to throwing others under the bus if it advances his own interests. Take, for example, his pastor of two decades, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I have no doubt that if indeed Fast and Furious went no higher than Holder that Obama would hang him out to dry in a heartbeat. Today’s action invoking executive privilege raises the strong inference that Obama knew about Fast and Furious while it was happening, if not from the get-go.

In the words of Senator Howard Baker, “What did the president know and when did he know it?”

Operation Fast and Furious is being called “Obama’s Watergate.” In truth, it’s far, far worse than that. Watergate involved a burglary and a coverup. Fast and Furious involved the United States government running weapons to foreign criminals and the deaths of hundreds of people.

Under common law, if a person is a major participant with others in the commission of a felony, and someone is killed during the crime, he can be convicted of felony murder.

By invoking executive privilege, President Obama has cast in his lot with criminals responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent people. He doesn’t belong in the White House, he belongs in the Big House.