Rod Dreher

Authority and the Current Crisis

Eric Holder: Obama’s Alberto Gonzales

By Rod Dreher • June 20, 2012, 11:46 AM

President Obama asserted executive privilege over documents related to the “Fast and Furious” operation Wednesday as a House panel moved to hold Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt after he failed to hand over documents related to a congressional inquiry into the scandal.

In a letter sent to Obama late Tuesday, Holder urged Obama to exert executive privilege, because sharing internal documents with lawmakers could “have significant, damaging consequences.”

Why, it was only yesterday that:

President Bush invoked executive privilege for the first time Thursday to keep Congress from seeing documents of prosecutors’ decision-making in cases ranging from decades-old Boston murders to the Clinton-era fund-raising probe.

The administration informed a House committee of the decision prior to a congressional hearing Thursday on the Boston case involving the FBI’s handling of informants.

Executive privilege is a doctrine recognized by the courts that ensures presidents can get candid advice in private without fear of its becoming public.

The privilege, however, is best known for the unsuccessful attempts by former Presidents Nixon and Clinton to keep evidence secret during impeachment investigations.

White House counsel Alberto Gonzales recommended Bush invoke the privilege earlier this fall.

Aware the White House was considering such a new policy, members of Congress have raised concerns that it will hinder lawmakers from giving proper oversight to federal prosecutions, noting scandals in the past would never have been exposed if Congress had been kept from sensitive documents.

“If this unprecedented policy is permitted to stand, Congress will not be able to exercise meaningful oversight of the executive branch,” Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., said recently.

The more things stay the same, the more you realize that it’s almost never about principle, and almost always about power.

Posted in Law, Politics, Presidential politics. Tagged Alberto Gonzales, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, executive privilege, George W. Bush, John Ashcroft.

15 Responses to Eric Holder: Obama’s Alberto Gonzales

Tyro says:

June 20, 2012 at 12:20 pm

The thing is that the Bush administration’s incompetence and failure was so total, so complete, and such a complete exposure of his supporters as people who failed the ultimate test of moral judgment that their only recourse is to try to claim that “the Obama administration and everyone in it was just as bad, if not worse!” The attempt to turn the Bush administration’s Fast and Furious program into some kind of important scandal and the attempt to claim there’s a coverup when all that happened is that thousands of documents turned over by the DoJ have resulted in nothing is just a lot of fronting by Issa and an attempt to cover up for heir past moral failures in life and an attempt to aim that the Obama administration, whose leader and staff are demonstrably better and more competent in every way than its predecessors are “worse than Bush.”

It must hurt Issa and the Republicans real bad to know that the junior Senator of Illinois can be a better president and surround himself with better people than that morally crippled fool from Texas, but it is a reality that Issa and Republicans are going to have to accept in life, much as they will try to deny it.

Keep in mind that for a his moral posturing, Issa was a vocal torture and Iraq war supporter who lacked the basic ability to stand up not just to Gonzales but the other mefactors in he administration.
TTT says:

June 20, 2012 at 12:48 pm

That’s the thing about precedents, isn’t it? Dems saw the total lack of consequences after the Bush / Gonzalez crimewave and it makes taking the quick and easy path even more appealing. Obama could probably start a land war in Myanmar looking for uranium.

I tell this to a lot of my lefty buddies too. You can’t unbreak an egg, can’t unbankrupt a country, can’t unkill your victims. Guantanamo should never have been opened, but now that it’s there it probably can never be closed, at least not until all inmates have died of old age.

There are very significant things about America that George W. Bush really did destroy or unsalvageably corrupt forever. We all live in his ruins and now it’s Obama’s turn.
Beyng says:

June 20, 2012 at 12:55 pm

Tyro, perhaps your vision is clouded by lingering symptoms of Bush Derangement Syndrome, or perhaps you are simply far too charitable to our current Presidential administration (for the record, I loathed Bush–I wish to avoid making this any kind of pissing match between Republicans and Democrats; my hatred for the past few administrations is generous, expansive, and impartial).

First, Issa isn’t the issue here.

Second, I think, taking a long view, Holder is as troubling an AG as Ashcroft ever was. Aside from continuing the securitarian trends of his predecessor, he has a few problematic hobby horses of his own. Most of them are, for lack of a better term, more “racial.” And some of them are outright more corrupt. And really? “Fast and Furious” is no big deal? Maybe I’ve missed a memo or two–I’ve been out of the loop for the past week or so–but last I checked Fast and Furious represents a substantial dereliction of responsibility by multiple high levels of the DoJ, including Holder’s own office, aside from the fact that thousands of assault weapons have been basically given to Mexican drug cartels. In another, more reasonable world, Holder would at the very least have resigned (and if the President hadn’t had any scruples and fired him first).

Third, are you sincere in your claim that the Obama administration, in its entirety, is “demonstrably better and more competent in every way than its predecessors”? Admittedly, such a claim can’t be quantitatively verified. But I’d really like you to clarify this notion. Sebelius, Napolitano, and friends don’t strike me as an especially competent or reassuring bunch, and I certainly find it difficult to acclaim them as demonstrably “better” than their predecessors. And in the broadest of strokes, if we presume–purely for the sake of argument–that Obama is a one-term President, would anyone deny that his administration will go down in the record books as at best mediocre? And would anyone deny that he has basically mimicked in nearly every way the tactics (and policies!) of his predecessor? I’m just not sure what you’re getting at here.
Peter says:

June 20, 2012 at 1:03 pm

Weird how I hear so much about operation fast and furious and so little about operation wide receiver.
reflectionephemeral says:

June 20, 2012 at 1:04 pm

Here’s some perspective from folks who like America enough to learn some facts:

1. Issa Has No Case: Issa’s uncovered no evidence showing Holder bears any blame for the botched operations begun under George W. Bush, even though the Justice Department turned over thousands of pages of documents concerning the operations. Instead of accepting this fact, Issa has requested many more documents containing confidential information regarding ongoing law enforcement investigations, and is now threatening to hold Holder in contempt if these documents are not turned over. Holder is entirely correct to withhold these documents, however, because Justice Department documents are not subject to congressional subpoena if they would reveal “strategies and procedures that could be used by individuals seeking to evade [DOJ’s] law enforcement efforts.”
2. Reagan’s Justice Department Agreed With Holder: President Reagan’s Justice Department warned in the 1980s that the Constitution’s separation of powers prevents the kind of documents Issa is seeking from being revealed to Congress because of the risk that the legislature could “exert pressure or attempt to influence the prosecution of criminal cases.”
3. Law Enforcement Rejects Issa’s Witchhunt: Issa’s efforts to embarrass Holder are an unnecessary distraction that hinders the Department of Justice’s ability to do its real job. As an organization representing numerous senior law enforcement officials warned Issa, his efforts are “an impediment to the vigorous enforcement of violence and crime.”
4. Even Top Republicans Think Issa Goes Too Far: After Issa leaked his plans to pursue contempt charges to the media, the House Republican leadership pressured him to back off. Indeed, even House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) has indicated that Issa is overreaching.
5. Issa Is Fixated On A Conspiracy Theory: Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of this affair is what Issa once suggested his investigation will uncover. In an interview with Sean Hannity, Issa claimed that the Obama administration “made a crisis” when they continued the Bush-era gunrunning operations because they wanted to “us[e] this crisis to somehow take away or limit people’s Second Amendment rights.” This accusation originates from a former militiaman who supports violent resistance to imagined government attempts to seize his guns. And it amounts to an accusation that a series of botched gun stings that begun during the Bush Administration were actually part of a secret Obama plot to release guns to Mexican drug lords, so that those guns could then be used to kill federal agents, which would then cause a national uprising in support of gun control.
Turmarion says:

June 20, 2012 at 1:56 pm

This is part of the reason I’m not going to vote for Obama in November, though I voted for him in 2008. He promised to stop this kind of crap, and has to the contray jumped headfirst into it. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander–it was wrong for Bush, it’s wrong for Obama. Third party and/or symbolic vote for none of the above time.
Sheldon says:

June 20, 2012 at 3:34 pm

No one will get an argument from me that Obama’s refusal to dial back most of Bush’s executive overreach is a giant disappointment, but in this case Obama’s action is totally justified. The policy now under attack was begun under Bush, Holder did absolutely nothing wrong and Issa is just a small-bore Joe McCarthy and political hack trying to make a name for himself. He’s a nut. Obama should have stopped Issa’s witchhunt antics months ago. Read what reflectionephemeral well and fully stated.
Geoff Guth says:

June 20, 2012 at 3:43 pm

Re: principle vs. power

I think this will be Obama’s lasting legacy: that he put a Democratic imprimatur on the Bush presidency’s executive excesses. And those precedents are now set in stone. That’s a terrible disappointment for many previous Obama supporters, myself included (for what it’s worth, I see little to no difference between Obama and Romney on everything but social issues; they’re both creatures of the same wealthy, imperial elite)

I’d point out that a similar dynamic is at work with those who profess to believe in federalism, but then assert the need for a federal marriage amendment or federal prosecution of the drug war. Federalism isn’t a principle either but a tactic used to achieve other ends.

It will be interesting (in the sense of that old Chinese curse) to see just how people react if the economy does tank again. Both parties have more or less revealed themselves to be largely bankrupt in terms of ideas. The only thing more laughable than Obama’s muddling through policy is what Romney proposes, which seems designed to pay off his backers and consign everyone else to the pit.
Rod Dreher says:

June 20, 2012 at 4:00 pm

Geoff: (for what it’s worth, I see little to no difference between Obama and Romney on everything but social issues; they’re both creatures of the same wealthy, imperial elite)

You and I are pretty much on the same page here. I think Romney will be marginally better on social issues (from my POV), and that Obama will be marginally better on foreign policy. But the differences are heavily outweighed by the similarities.
Bob Dob says:

June 20, 2012 at 4:10 pm

Wide Receiver attempted to track the guns beyond the Mexican border using trackers built into the guns and with the full co-operation of the Mexican government who were supposed to surveil the gun runners after they crossed the border. Wide Receiver was terminated after it became clear that the smugglers had learned how to disable.

In Fast and Furious, no effort was made to track the guns beyond the Mexican border, there was no co-operation with Mexican law enforcement, and the gun smugglers were placed under no surveillance whatsoever. The guns were simply logged when they showed up at crime scenes.

Wide Receiver, as much of an ill-conceived failure as it was acknowledged to be when it was terminated, was not “just like” Fast and Furious.

What possible rationale could Fast and Furious have had if the guns were not being tracked and the smugglers were not under surveillance? What useful information could be gleaned from only logging the guns appearances at crime scenes?
Siarlys Jenkins says:

June 20, 2012 at 11:31 pm

“The more things stay the same, the more you realize that it’s almost never about principle, and almost always about power.”

Well sure, and the same is true of the congressional investigations. There isn’t a lot of substance to the raging fury about F&F: that’s why its not gaining much traction with the public, to the fury of those who keep harping on it.
Bob Dob says:

June 21, 2012 at 12:30 am

Sure Siarlys, the only reason anyone could possibly be disgusted at a government program that only “works” if people are murdered (no murders, no guns dropped at murder scenes, no “data” to track) is the grubby factor of rote partisanship.

Is there anything conceivable that this Administration could do that you would not defend?

Here’s Attorney General Eric Holder on the differences between Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious, by the way:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1G5x0XmNiA&feature=player_detailpage#t=188s
MH - Secular Misanthropist says:

June 21, 2012 at 12:30 pm

And David Brooks wonders why we have a follower problem.
Rosie says:

June 22, 2012 at 6:52 pm

This sting operation regarding the guns and the Mexican cartel began when Alberto Gonzales was Attorney General. If Eric Holden is under investigation, why aren’t the other Attorney Generals – starting with Gonzeles and ending with Mark Filip – also under investigation by the GOP?
Siarlys Jenkins says:

June 22, 2012 at 10:18 pm

Bob-a-Dob: I’ve heard those accusations, of course. I have yet to see evidence to back them up. I have many criticisms of the Obama administration, but I won’t try to hijack Rod’s blog to display them in depth and detail… and he’s alert enough not to let me.

Whenever the party not in control of the White House controls at least one house of congress, we get this kind of mutual accusation. Sometimes there is substance to the congressional concerns, but we get the same show whether there is or not. There must be some reasonable parameter of executive privilege… the executive branch is a co-equal branch of government… but of course that can be abused. Thus, mere assertions of power or privilege cannot be decisive.