The People Vs. Barack Obama

by Ben Shapiro

  There was an agenda here. As Senator Grassley stated, “There’s plenty of evidence showing that this administration planned to use the tragedies of Fast and Furious as rationale to further their goals of a long gun reporting requirement.” In July 2011, Grassley and House Oversight Committee chair Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) asked Eric Holder whether the Justice Department had talked about how “Fast and Furious could be used to justify additional regulatory authorities.” The department never responded. Issa told Attkisson, “In light of the evidence, the Justice Department’s refusal to answer questions about the role Operation Fast and Furious was supposed to play in advancing new firearms regulations is simply unacceptable.”27

  Overall, the feds lost control of 1,400 of the 2,000 weapons smuggled across the border in Fast and Furious,28 from handguns to .50-caliber sniper rifles.29 The weapons were used in at least three murders, four kidnappings, an attempted murder, and eleven other crime scenes.30 One hundred ninety-five firearms found at Mexican crime scenes were linked to Operation Fast and Furious. Humberto Benitez Treviño, who chairs the justice committee in Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies, said, “we have 150 cases of injuries and homicides with arms that were smuggled and passed illegally into our country. . . . This was an undercover program that wasn’t properly controlled.”31 By September 2011, Issa put that number at two hundred murders.32

  “I DID NOT AUTHORIZE IT”

  Just as with a typical mob operation gone wrong, nobody knew anything. That ignorance started at the very top. President Obama told Univision in March 2011, “There have been problems.” But as he says so often about scandals stemming from his administration—like Lieutenant Renault in Casablanca—he’s “shocked, shocked!” to learn about them. “I heard on the news about this story—Fast and Furious—where, allegedly, guns were run into Mexico,” he said. “First of all, I did not authorize it. Eric Holder, the Attorney General, did not authorize it. He’s been very clear that our policy is to catch gunrunners and put them into jail. So what he’s done is he’s assigned an inspector general to investigate exactly what happened.” Obama then played his second-favorite card: it was a big government, and he didn’t know anything that happened in it. “This is a pretty big government,” Obama scoffed. “The United States government. I’ve got a lot of moving parts.”33

  In October 2011, Obama reiterated this stance to then–ABC News White House correspondent Jake Tapper: “People who have screwed up will be held accountable.” He continued, “It’s very upsetting to me to think that somebody showed such bad judgment that they would allow something like that to happen. And we will find out who and what happened in this situation and make sure it gets corrected.” Then Obama shifted attention back to Holder; he said he had “complete confidence” in the man who ran the Justice Department—the same department that oversaw the operation in the first place. Holder, Obama stated, would “figure out who, in fact, was responsible for that decision and how it got made.”34

  President Obama wasn’t the only one shifting attention to Holder. In March 2011, Napolitano told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she had not been informed about the operation, and suggested that Holder “had asked his inspector general to look at the operation.” Napolitano said that it would be “premature and inappropriate for me to comment” on Fast and Furious before Holder finished his investigation. In September, Napolitano said she’d never spoken to Burke, her former chief of staff, about Fast and Furious, and said she hadn’t spoken with Holder about Fast and Furious, either. Katie Pavlich’s sources told her that Napolitano’s statements were “a lie,” and that Holder and Napolitano coordinated on Fast and Furious shortly after Terry’s death. “Janet will be lucky not to go to prison,” a source told Pavlich.35

  What, then, of the administration’s top hit man, Holder, whose department had overseen Fast and Furious?

  On March 2, 2011, Assistant Attorney General Weich informed Senator Grassley that Attorney General Holder had asked the acting inspector general to investigate Fast and Furious.36 On May 2, Holder, Napolitano, and Obama met at the White House in preparation for Holder’s testimony on the hill. The next day, May 3, 2011, Holder told the Judiciary Committee that he had only heard of Fast and Furious “for the first time over the last few weeks.”37 But internal Department of Justice memos showed that Holder had known about Fast and Furious since months before Terry’s murder. A memo from Michael F. Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, hit Holder’s desk on July 5, 2010—and it explicitly mentioned Fast and Furious.38 Another memo from Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer to Holder on November 1, 2010, mentions Fast and Furious as well.39 And did Justice know that Fast and Furious was a gunwalking program? You bet: an email exchange between two high-ranking department officials on October 18, 2010, shows them agonizing about “how much grief we get for ‘guns walking’ ” if the program were to be revealed.40

  The situation was getting ugly for Holder. In October 2011, Issa subpoenaed Holder for documents on Fast and Furious. “Top Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Holder,” Issa said, “know more about Operation Fast and Furious than they have publicly acknowledged. The documents this subpoena demands will provide answers to questions that Justice officials have tried to avoid since this investigation began eight months ago. It’s time we know the whole truth.” Holder said that the Justice Department would “undoubtedly comply” with the demands. Tracy Schmaler, spokeswoman for the department, said, “We’ve made clear from the beginning that the Department intends to work with the committee to answer legitimate questions. However, this subpoena shows that Chairman Issa is more interested in generating headlines than in real oversight important to the American people.”41 Jay Carney, White House press secretary, came to Holder’s defense as well: “The bottom line is the Attorney General’s testimony to both the House and the Senate was consistent and truthful.” Obama stated, “I have complete confidence in Attorney General Holder, in how he handles his office.”

  Issa was less generous. “The President has said he has full confidence in this attorney general. I have no confidence in a president who has confidence in an attorney general who has in fact not terminated or dealt with the individuals, including key lieutenants who from the very beginning had some knowledge and long before Brian Terry was gunned down, knew enough to stop this program.”42

  The promise of compliance with the subpoena was another Holder lie. For months, the Justice Department failed to comply with the subpoena. Finally, in June 2012—eight months after Issa originally issued the subpoena—Issa was prepared to move forward with a contempt vote against Holder in the House Oversight Committee.

  Holder would finally be held to the fire.

  That’s when Obama stepped in to save his legal consigliere: Obama invoked executive privilege to avoid production of documents concerning Fast and Furious. “We regret that we have arrived at this point,” said Deputy Attorney General James Cole in a letter. He said that document production “would have significant, damaging consequences.” As the Los Angeles Times reported, Cole “did not disclose whether Obama has been briefed or had another supervisory role in Fast and Furious.”

  Holder, it turns out, had written Obama a letter requesting that he invoke executive privilege: “you may properly assert executive privilege over the documents at issue, and I respectfully request you do so.” And despite Obama’s protestations in 2007 about President Bush’s “tendency . . . to hide behind executive privilege every time there’s something a little shaky that’s taking place,” Obama went along with the plan. Grassley immediately fired back, questioning how the White House could invoke executive privilege “if there is no White House involvement?” And Speaker of the House John Boehner’s office added that the invocation “implies that White House officials were either involved in the ‘Fast and Furious’ operation or the cover-up that followed.”43

  The final Department of Justice inspector general report was released
on September 19, 2012. It put the blame on everybody around Eric Holder, while leaving Holder unscathed. The people to blame, the report said, were Deputy Chief of Staff Wilkinson, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein, and former acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler. Those four men “failed to alert the attorney general to significant information about or flaws in those investigations,” the report stated.

  As soon as the report was released, the Justice Department helpfully let the public know that Melson and Weinstein had stepped down. Holder then blamed Issa, Grassley, and Republicans for politicizing the Fast and Furious operation—a familiar tactic the Obama administration utilizes over and over. “It is unfortunate that some were so quick to make baseless accusations before they possessed the facts about these operations—accusations that turned out to be without foundation and that have caused a great deal of unnecessary harm and confusion,” Holder said. “I hope today’s report acts as a reminder of the dangers of adopting as fact unsubstantiated conclusions before an investigation of the circumstances is completed.” Naturally, fellow Democrats in Congress like Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD) played the report as a full exculpation of Holder and the Obama administration: “Neither the attorney general nor senior DOJ officials authorized or approved of gun-walking in Fast and Furious . . . gun-walking started under the Bush administration in 2006, and . . . ATF agents in Phoenix and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona share responsibility for misguided operations spanning five years.”44

  The day after the Justice Department report was released, the department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, told the House that the White House had stonewalled on Fast and Furious. According to Horowitz, the White House national security assistant at the time, Kevin O’Reilly, refused to speak with the Justice Department. O’Reilly had been copied on some of the emails from Newell discussing Fast and Furious in detail. “O’Reilly’s unwillingness to speak to us made it impossible” for the department to track down who in the White House knew what, Horowitz said. The White House claimed, with no evidence, that Newell and O’Reilly were merely friends, and that the emails were not professionally related. In other words, there was no White House involvement, and no way to force O’Reilly to testify. The White House maintained that the only emails it had concerning Fast and Furious were the exchanges between Newell and O’Reilly. Horowitz said, “the White House is beyond the purview of the inspector general’s office.”45 O’Reilly was transferred to Baghdad shortly after Newell testified before Congress.46 He returned to the United States only in October 2012, and was quickly handed a State Department job.47

  But the favor for the Obama administration had already been done. The same day Horowitz testified that the White House had stonewalled its requests on Fast and Furious, President Obama appeared on Univision and denied once again that there was any cover-up at all. He said, quite to the contrary, that everything was aboveboard and transparent on Fast and Furious. When asked by a Univision interviewer whether Holder should have known about Fast and Furious, and whether Holder should be fired, Obama stated:

  When Eric Holder found out about it, he discontinued it. We assigned an inspector general to do a thorough report that was just issued, confirming that, in fact, Eric Holder did not know about this, that he took prompt action and the people who did initiate this were held accountable. But what I think is most important is recognizing that we’ve got a challenge in terms of weapons flowing south. And the strategy that was pursued, obviously, out of Arizona, was completely wrongheaded. Those folks who were responsible have been held accountable. . . . I will tell you that Eric Holder has my complete confidence because he has shown himself to be willing to hold accountable those who took these actions and is passionate about making sure that we’re preventing guns from getting into the wrong hands.

  When the questioner followed up by asking why he was not releasing all available documents, Obama said “we’ve released almost all of them.”48

  That was a lie. As Judicial Watch, an organization dedicated to government transparency, reported, “We’ve sued the Justice Department and the ATF to obtain Fast and Furious records. They already refused to answer our very request for documents—we haven’t received one document from Justice or the ATF regarding Fast and Furious—which is unusual, even for the secretive Obama administration. Given their dissembling, Justice and the ATF are apparently in cover-up mode.”49

  Nonetheless, the only documents that remained filed away, Obama stated, were “internal communications that were not related to the actual Fast and Furious operation.” Of course, all we had to go on was his word. But that was good enough for him. Obama also stated that no independent investigation was necessary. Then he fibbed, “we are happy to continue to provide the information that is relevant to this.” But, he added, all of it was a “political distraction” anyway from “us actually solving the problems that we need to solve.” Those problems, presumably, did not include corrupt gunrunning operations designed to curb Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

  Obama finally brushed off Fast and Furious as “people who do dumb things.” An approved multiagency operation that got hundreds of people killed, including Americans, was now just a “dumb thing.” Then, after claiming no responsibility and blaming “political circuses” for making an issue of Fast and Furious, Obama finally disingenuously stated, “ultimately, I’m responsible, and my key managers, including the Attorney General, are responsible, for holding those people accountable, for making sure they are fired if they do dumb things, and then fixing the system to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”50 Only, as we’ll see, he didn’t.

  SNITCHES GET STITCHES

  Brave CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson—one of the few watchdogs rather than lapdogs in the Obama-loving media—was reamed by the administration for her reporting on Fast and Furious. “The Justice Department’s communications director Tracy Schmaler yelled at her over the phone,” Katie Pavlich relates. “A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, reportedly directed a barrage of expletives toward her.” Attkisson told radio host Laura Ingraham, “The White House and Justice Department will tell you that I’m the only reporter—as they told me—that is not reasonable. They say the Washington Post is reasonable, I’m the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I’m unfair and biased by pursuing it.”51

  It was worse than that. In June 2013, as other reporters announced having been targeted by the Obama administration, Attkisson revealed that her computer had been hacked during her investigations of Fast and Furious and Benghazi. At first, the media greeted her claim with skepticism. Then CBS News confirmed that she’d been hacked by “an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions in late 2012.” CBS News said they’d hired a cybersecurity firm to check Attkisson’s story: “Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson’s accounts. While no malicious code was found, forensic analysis revealed an intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data. This party also used sophisticated methods to remove all possible indications of unauthorized activity, and alter system times to cause further confusion. CBS News is taking steps to identify the responsible party and their method of access.”52

  As for whistle-blowers within the ATF and Justice Department, they ended up with their heads on platters, in violation of federal law preventing witness tampering and retaliation against whistle-blowers. Dodson, the first ATF agent to testify behind closed doors to Senator Grassley, was granted whistle-blower protection. That didn’t help him much—Dodson says Newell and Gillett asked him to recant his testimony in writing. He said no. He says the ATF took away his weapons and reassigned him. Melson called him a “disgruntled” employee. Burke leaked memos to the press attempting to smear Dodson. Dodson was handed over to ATF public affairs chief Scott Thomasson, who allegedly said, “All of these whistleblowers have axes to grind. ATF needs to f—k these
guys,” and added, “we need to get whatever dirt we can on these guys and take them down.” After Melson’s ouster, new acting ATF director B. Todd Jones warned whistle-blowers that there would be “consequences.” Somebody leaked Dodson’s confidential file to Forbes magazine for a hit piece; Justice Department public affairs chief Tracy Schmaler was widely suspected.53

  Other whistle-blowers received similar treatment. ATF investigator Vince Cefalu, who started CleanUpATF.org in an attempt to keep eyes on perceived corruption within the agency, was relieved of his job in June 2011. The Justice Department tried to shut down the website. ATF agent Peter Forcelli, who testified before Congress that the operation “endangered the American public” and “was orchestrated in conjunction with Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley” and Dennis Burke, met with similar treatment: in Arizona the Justice Department opened up an old case against him, and Forcelli was transferred to a desk job in ATF headquarters.54 Overall, three out of four whistle-blowers were reassigned to positions outside Arizona by the end of August 2011.55

  THE AFTERMATH

  Like any good Don, Obama allowed low-level flunkies to take the hits, elevated middlemen, and protected his top agents. In the end, nobody would see any real consequences. Except, of course, Brian Terry, who remained dead.