Holder's Resignation: Can He Still Claim Executive Privilege?

Attorneys General usually don't stay on for eight years. Even six years is a pretty long hitch. They might have an ideological ax to grind but usually it's all about name recognition and stepping up to the most lucrative legal opportunities this country provides. Holder is frothing at the mouth to cash some big checks.

The reason Holder held on so long is the same reason the embezzler never takes a vacation. Holder has dirty, if not bloody, hands. At the very least, Holder is guilty of contempt for Congress. He might also be guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice. He has been less than cooperative with Congress and someone in a high place squelched the Fast Furious investigation and sidetracked the IRS Lerner Gang investigation. Know anything about those things, citizen Holder?

Pundits have called Holder "Obama's Bobby Kennedy." How heartwarmingly fraternal. I suggest that a more apt comparison would be with John Mitchell, Richard Nixon's corrupt AG who ultimately served nineteen months in prison. If a Republican with a spine (oxymoron?) is elected president in 2016, Holder could be in as much trouble as Mitchell found himself long ago.

Bye bye Eric. Can't say I will miss you.

Does The Obama DOJ Block Mergers By Non-Donors?

In 2011, AT&T T +0.06% announced it would seek permission from the government for a $39 billion merger with T-Mobile.  Processing the application was expected to take at least twelve months.  But within five months, the Department of Justice announced it had filed a lawsuit blocking the friendly merger.

Enter AT&T CEO Randall L. Stephenson, well known to be a free market Republican favoring  pro-growth tax reform and opposing Obama-style redistributing income from the working class.  Mr. Stephenson has a long history of Republican giving, and averaging the three election cycles between 2006–2010, AT&T employees supported Republican candidates by 60%.

Key government players during merger talks were Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski and Renata Hesse, now Deputy Attorney General for Anti Trust at DOJ, and of course, Attorney General Eric Holder, who runs the most blatantly politicized DOJ in history.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/04/14/how-obamas-justice-department-selectively-blocks-mergers-by-republican-ceos/

Black Pastors Call For Eric Holder's Impeachment

AMAZING! THIS GUY CAN TALK FOR 10 MINUTES ABOUT IMPEACHING ERIC HOLDER WITHOUT MENTIONING CONTEMPT FOR CONGRESS

Will Impeachment Be A Primary Issue?

First, we need to distinguish between the impeachment of Eric Holder and Barack Obama. Eric Holder is in contempt of Congress. He is a lawless man who should have been impeached long ago.

The president is a separate matter. There are those who believe he has already established grounds for impeachment. When I did a search I was surprised at how worn this well-trod path happened to be. Tom Tancredo called for the 44th president's impeachment in 2010. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/22/the-case-for-impeachment/

Congressman Steve Stockman advocated impeachment in 2013.

And this from an Esquire portrait of Chuck Hagel.

The conversation beaches itself for a moment on that word — impeachment— spoken by a conservative Republican from a safe Senate seat in a reddish state. It's barely even whispered among the serious set in Washington, and it rings like a gong in the middle of the sentence, even though it flowed quite naturally out of the conversation he was having about how everybody had abandoned their responsibility to the country, and now there was a war going bad because of it.

http://www.esquire.com/features/chuckhagel0407


Did you catch that? "It's barely even whispered among the serious set in Washington."  Is that how the insiders now refer to themselves? The political class uses the same term that Vito Corleone uses to refer to the Turk? "Solazzo is a serious man..." But the I word now appears on the Beltway radar.

We have to respect "the serious set." Impeachment is not like marriage. You don't want to enter into this institution lightly. In the words of Joe Biden, oh let's just skip JB's most memorable quote.

Impeachment is not a frivolous matter. We are not one of those countries defined by its regimes. In those places, former leaders do not gracefully retire to the lecture circuit. They are imprisoned or tortured or killed. There was a lot of chatter about impeaching George Bush but even "the serious set" rejected that nonsense. But George Bush did not use the IRS to crush political opposition or use DOJ to intimidate donors or NSA to spy on reporter's families and on and on and on.

Attempting to use the IRS as a political weapon helped get Nixon impeached. Someone--quite possibly the White House--succeeded and succeeded big in using the IRS to stifle and silence Tea Party/Conservative/Religious groups. Nixon was an amateur compared to these tyrants.

Nixon was also impeached for obstructing justice. If it can be demonstrated that the White House obstructed/impeded/mislead investigators in Fast and Furious, Benghazi, MF Global, and of course, the IRS conspiracy, the I word would infiltrate serious set cocktail hours.

How does this become a campaign issue? I am not sure if Cantor or Ryan or Boehner would impeach even if the trails all lead back to you know who. They might look to the opinion polls that tell us that any rebuke of the pampered one is perceived as racist in nature. It would be good to hear from their own lips that they are committed to judging others based on "...the content of their character."

Karl Rove says the GOP has to find an issue beyond Obamacare. The serious set might not find that cause. The conservative power base on the other hand? They might have already found it.

Is Anyone Else Offended That The Architect of Operation Fast and Furious Lectures Us On Gun Violence?

Even if Eric Holder emerges legally unscathed from Operation Fast and Furious, he will forever be exposed as one of the most callous human beings the world has ever seen. The cold-hearted indifference Holder has displayed at the reports of deaths numbering somewhere between two hundred and "thousands" is frightening. And the man who tried to squelch the investigation with executive privelege is every bit as scary in his reptilian sentiment.

Mr. Attorney General and Mr. President, do not talk to us about gun violence. You have no credibility in this matter.

Obama Mght Be Outed And Impeached In The Same Year

2013 might be a tough year for the president. His administration deftly ran out the election clock on Benghazi, Fast and Furious and security leaks could emerge as a third scandal. But Benghazi and Fast and Furious are alive and well and they will be returning to center stage in the near future.

The Fast and Furious investigation will resume with Eric Holder being held in contempt of Congress. A declaration of Executive Privilege is not necessarily a "Get Out of Jail Free" card. The parallels with Watergate are remarkable. In 1972, President Nixon successfully ran out the clock and was re-elected in a landslide. Immediately thereafter his problems snowballed.

It has often been said about Watergate that it was not the crime but the cover-up that destroyed the administration. True. Truer yet about Fast and Furious. This is a complicated case. I don't know what happens when the Attorney General is held in contempt. Executive Privilege can stall the process but there are constraints on this exercise. If the White House can be shown to obstruct justice (as with Watergate) the entire administration will unravel like a Chinese sweater in a bed of kittens. A criminal cover-up could certainly result in impeachment.

Then, there is Benghazi. Again, a cover-up has been attempted but this cover-up might not be criminal in nature. Susan Rice et al (an et al that includes the president and the secretary of state) were not under oath when they lied to the American people. So this administration might get yet another pass on yet another series of lies. But then there was a bloodless coup where Petraeus and others were asked to resign. Uh oh.

This is a ham-fisted operation if ever there was one. If high-level personnel were terminated to keep them quiet that could be construed as an obstruction of justice (even though a criminal probe had not yet been launched.) And this tactic also highlights the national security issue of personal relationships.

That might sound like excess verbiage but let me explain. If General Petraeus is asked to resign because he has a mistress and thus is vulnerable to blackmail, what does that say about someone who might have smoked crack and gotten it on with Larry Sinclair? The door will be knocked off its hinges and "All The President's Men" could take on a whole new meaning.

In the Benghazi scandal the cover-up might pale in comparison to the events of September 11, 2012. Fast and Furious resulted in dozens of deaths but a few mea culpas could have ended it. The public watches too much cheesy television where the government employees are always saintly. In real life government agencies have used criminal proxies to distribute weapons and narcotics and then bust the subordinates. They might rail against the drugs or guns as they distribute them but they have distributed contraband as adroitly as any criminal enterprise.

This might not be a routine exercise but it is not an uncommon practice either. Eric Holder could have said "mistakes were made" and we could have moved on. Instead, there was an elaborate cover-up. That is where Fast and Furious and Benghazi diverge.

Whatever happened on September 11, 2012 was scandalous. Ain't no rug big enough to sweep this one under. Presidential inaction might be the most favorable spin for this scandal. A personality that will pimp his own mother's memory and allow his half-brother and aunt to live in squalor might just hit the snooze button when his fellow Americans are under attack. Chilling to think that the president's indifference might have resulted in the torture and death of four of his countrymen. But reality might be even worse. Much worse.

So the president might get outed, his staff indicted and he might get impeached while enduring prolonged budget wars as the Middle East continues to flare up from time to time. These events might break a normal man but the narcissist will revel in the attention. The narcissist will celebrate his stardom as his country burns.

2013 should be an interesting year.