Eric Holder

The Obama Admin. Makes Nixon Look Like an Amateur (Updated)

Published by Papa Giorgio

The above UPDATE is with thanks to GayPatriot and Bruce’s Twitter page. Are people exaggerating the similarities? The only difference is the responsibility level… Nixon showed he was a man. Obama? Not so much.

The above audio is Hugh reading from the following article in the New Yorker Magazine:

The Justice Department and Fox News’s Phone Records

The Obama Justice Department has seized the phone records of numbers that are associated with White House staffers and, apparently, with Fox News reporters, according to a document filed in the case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, on October 13, 2011. Kim is a former State Department contractor accused of violating the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking classified information to James Rosen, a Fox News reporter. Ronald C. Machen, Jr., the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, who is prosecuting the case, has seized records associated with two phone numbers at the White House, at least five numbers associated with Fox News, and one that has the same area code and exchange as Rosen’s personal-cell-phone number (the last four numbers are redacted).

In all, Machen has seized records associated with over thirty different phone numbers. In the filing that included the new information, the last four digits of each telephone line targeted by the Obama Administration are redacted. Two of the numbers begin with area code 202 and the exchange 456, which, according to current and former Administration officials, are used exclusively by the White House. (The phone number for the White House switchboard is (202) 456-1414.)

At least five other numbers targeted by the government include the area code 202 and the exchange 824. The phone number for the Fox News Washington bureau, which is publicly available, is (202) 824-0001. Rosen’s work phone number at Fox News begins with the same area code and exchange.

William Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney, told The New Yorker this afternoon, “Because that information is sealed, I can’t confirm the owner or subscriber for any of those records.” Asked if the phone numbers of any reporters had been targeted in the Kim investigation, Miller said he could not comment.

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that, as part of the investigation of the Kim leak, Obama’s Department of Justice seized e-mails from Rosen’s personal Gmail account. In the search warrant for that request, the government described Rosen as “an aider, and abettor, and / or co-conspirator” in violating the Espionage Act, noting that the crime can be punished by ten years in prison. Rosen was not indicted in the case, but the suggestion in a government document that a reporter could be guilty of espionage for engaging in routine reporting is unprecedented and has alarmed many journalists and civil libertarians….

…read more…


Washington Blog does a bang-up job in showing how many liberals are saying that Obama’s “buck stops here” makes his admin waaayy worse than Nixon’s:

In the wake of the twin scandals of the IRS targeting conservative groups and the Department of Justice spying on AP reporters, the comparisons between Obama and Nixon are everywhere.

But what do experts say?

Former New York Times general counsel James Goodale – who represented the paper during its Pentagon Papers fight with the Nixon administration – said in an interview yesterday that Obama is worse than Nixon when it comes to press freedoms. And see this.

Former constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald noted last year:

We supposedly learned important lessons from the abuses of power of the Nixon administration, and then of the Bush administration: namely, that we don’t trust government officials to exercise power in the dark, with no judicial oversight, with no obligation to prove their accusations. Yet now we hear exactly this same mentality issuing from Obama, his officials and defenders to justify a  far more extreme power than either Nixon or Bush dreamed of asserting: he’s only killing The Bad Citizens, so there’s no reason to object!

Jonathan Turley – perhaps the top constitutional law expert in the United States (and a liberal) – writes:

The painful fact is that Barack Obama is the president that Nixon always wanted to be.

Four decades ago, Nixon was halted in his determined effort to create an “imperial presidency” with unilateral powers and privileges. In 2013, Obama wields those very same powers openly and without serious opposition. The success of Obama in acquiring the long-denied powers of Nixon is one of his most remarkable, if ignoble, accomplishments. Consider a few examples:

I will bullet point Jonathan Turley’s points that you can read his expanded thoughts on for yourself:

  • Warrantless surveillance
  • Unilateral military action
  • Kill lists
  • Attacking whistle-blowers

…More…

Nixon’s “Enemies List” is famous, and the former head of the National Security Agency’s global digital data gathering program says that Obama also has an enemies list … which has been used to take down a wide variety of people, including the head of the CIA. The Washington Post’s Ed Rogers notes:

Obama doesn’t need a traditional Nixonian enemies list. In the digital age, with the Obama machine’s much-celebrated technological capabilities, the president can sort his enemies by keywords.

You’ve heard about the AP spying scandal, and the head of the Department of Justice implies that the government has spied on many other reporters.

Reporters who criticize those in power are being smeared by the government and targeted for arrest (and see this).

Indeed, the Obama administration is treating real reporters as potential terrorists.

…read more…

AP Scandal 101 ~ An Explanation

Published by Papa Giorgio

Video Description:

Michael Medved uses video audio from Gary Pruitt, CEO of the Associated Press, on Face the Nation (CBS) to help explain the “there, there” behind the AP scandal that Dan Pfeiffer seemed to blame a Republican fishing expedition over. Medved also plays commentary by George Will and Ron Fournier from This Week (ABC).

Leaks Coming from Democratic Congressmen? Were AP Calls Made to the `Cloak Room`?

Published by Papa Giorgio

See more at MSNBC

I am on the fence about this… as much as I dislike Eric Holder and even think he could have done this particular job of national security a different way than taping records of hundreds of phones… you have to admit he was trying to stop a leak of major proportions.  Powerline has an interesting take on the matter, and even with the egregious leaks against Bush, his attorney general did not investigate the pres:

….Yesterday former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that the Bush administration once considered issuing the type of subpoena that the Justice Department issued against the AP, but ultimately opted against it. Did any Bush administration leak investigation expose the wrongdoers (other than those whose names appeared in the bylines of the Times articles)? I don’t think so.

The notorious national-security leaks that were featured on page one of the Times during the Bush administration seem to me to pale in comparison to the leaks involved in the AP story. Here is the original AP story of May 2012 that appears to have triggered the leak investigation in which the AP phone records were subpoenaed. (I found the AP story via Max Fisher’s comments on the investigation.) Here are the key paragraphs about the AP’s communications with the White House:

The AP learned about the thwarted plot last week but agreed to White House and CIA requests not to publish it immediately because the sensitive intelligence operation was still under way.

Once those concerns were allayed, the AP decided to disclose the plot Monday despite requests from the Obama administration to wait for an official announcement Tuesday.

The White House confirmed the story after the AP published it on Monday afternoon. Caitlin Hayden, the deputy national security council spokeswoman, said in a statement that Obama was first informed about the plot in April by his homeland security adviser John Brennan, and was advised that it did not pose a threat to the public.

Conor Fridersdorf takes a look at the subpoena of the AP phone records in the context of Holder’s characterization of the leak investigation. It seems to me that Friedersdorf raises a good question about the alleged harm caused by the AP story….

From the Blaze:

Here’s how the conversation went down [h/t Hot Air]:

Congressman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said Wednesday during an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show that the Justice Department’s investigation of the Associated Press involved obtaining phone records from the House of Representatives cloakroom.

HH: The idea that this might be a Geithner-Axelrod plan, and by that, the sort of intimation, Henry II style, will no one rid me of this turbulent priest, will no one rid me of these turbulent Tea Parties, that might have just been a hint, a shift of an eyebrow, a change in the tone of voice. That’s going to take a long time to get to. I don’t trust the Department of Justice on this. Do you, Congressman Nunes?

DN: No, I absolutely do not, especially after this wiretapping incident, essentially, of the House of Representative. I don’t think people are focusing on the right thing when they talk about going after the AP reporters. The big problem that I see is that they actually tapped right where I’m sitting right now, the Cloak Room.

HH: Wait a minute, this is news to me.

DN: The Cloak Room in the House of Representatives.

HH: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

DN: So when they went after the AP reporters, right? Went after all of their phone records, they went after the phone records, including right up here in the House Gallery, right up from where I’m sitting right now. So you have a real separation of powers issue that did this really rise to the level that you would have to get phone records that would, that would most likely include members of Congress, because as you know…

HH: Wow.

DN: …members of Congress talk to the press all the time.

HH: I did not know that, and that is a stunner.

DN: Now that is a separation of powers issue here, Hugh.

HH: Sure.

DN: And it’s a freedom of press issue. And now you’ve got the IRS going after people. So these things are starting to cascade one upon the other, and you have the White House pretending like they’re in the clouds like it’s not their issue somehow.

For those of you who don’t know what a congressional cloakroom is, it’s where U.S. lawmakers go to mingle, socialize, and relax between sessions. House and Senate cloakrooms have their own phone numbers. So if AP reporters were making calls to the House cloakroom, it appears the DOJ looked into those records, according to the congressman.

`Al-Qaeda 7` Revealed

Published by Papa Giorgio

Via Gateway Pundit. This is an older video I posted a while back asking the questions about these lawyers hired by the Obama admin, which Fox News has just revealed the names of:

 

 FOX News revealed the identities of these seven DOJ attorneys who represented terrorists before joining the Holder Justice Department.

Jonathan Cedarbaum– now an official with the Office of Legal Counsel
Eric Columbus– Senior counsel in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General
Karl Thompson– Office of Legal Counsel
Joseph Guerra– Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General at the Justice Department
Tali Farhadian– now an official in the Office of the Attorney General
Beth Brinkmann– now Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Civil Division
—- Tony West– the Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Division

Walid Shobat continues the similar train of thinking found at Gateway:

America was turned on its collective head on September 11th and is apparently still upside down. Do you remember the “American Taliban,” John Walker Lindh? If the answer to that question is yes, do you remember what a pariah he was considered after his capture? Ok, if you answered yes to that question, try to imagine Lindh’s Defense Attorney in 2001 becoming the number 3 at the Department of Justice.

Via Judicial Watch:

In a scary development, a major Obama fundraiser who defended a convicted al Qaeda terrorist will become the third highest ranking official at the Department of Justice (DOJ), which, ironically, is charged with defending the interests of the United States.

Northern California lawyer Tony West has been named Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, making him the No. 3 guy at the agency. In 2009 West, who helped Obama raise tens of millions of dollars as finance co-chairman of his first presidential campaign, was appointed to help run the DOJ’s civil division which represents the government, Congress and presidential cabinet officers and handles cases dealing with significant policy issues.

In a glowing press release, West’s boss (Eric Holder) apparently didn’t find it relevant or admirable to include West’s work in defending Lindh:

Conveniently omitted in the press release is that West represented convicted al Qaeda terrorist John Walker Lindh, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence. Lindh was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 while fighting against the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance as a member of the Taliban army. He actually pleaded guilty to aiding the Taliban and carrying explosives while fighting U.S. troops in the region.

Holder also knows a thing or two about defending terrorists. After all, he was a senior partner in a prestigious Washington D.C. law firm (Covington & Burling) that represented more than a dozen Yemeni terrorists held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay Cuba. While Holder was a senior partner the firm employed a number of radical attorneys to provide the Islamic extremists with thousands of hours of free legal representation, according to a news report.

The left often seems to be privately proud of that which rational people find deplorable and outwardly proud of ideals it rarely has any intention of aspiring to.

I can’t imagine why West wouldn’t be proud of defending a traitor to his country. Being assigned the case as a public defender is one thing but being an attorney who gleefully defended Lindh is something else entirely.

h/t Weasel Zippers

These are the values the Obama admin personnel have supported by defending, (via Atlas Shrugs):

Libya’s leadership has apologized after armed men smashed the graves of British soldiers killed during World War Two, in acts of vandalism that appeared to be directed against non-Muslims.

Amateur video footage of the attacks, posted on video sharing site YouTube and social networking site Facebook, showed men casually kicking over headstones in a war cemetery and using sledge hammers to smash a metal and stone cross.

One man can be heard saying: “This is a grave of a Christian” as he uprooted a stone headstone from the ground….

Graves of Churchill’s famed Desert Rats who fought the Nazis, desecrated by Islamists

Brian Terry and “Fast and Furious” (Plus: Sharyl Attkisson)

Published by Papa Giorgio

As reported at the web site of former Congressman Tom Tancredo in an article written by John Hill in NEWS (preserved at EXIT STAGE RIGHT):

‘Fast and Furious’ Explodes: Brian Terry Cover-Up, White House Emails Revealed

The disastrous Obama Administration operation “Fast and Furious”, which deliberately put guns in the hands of the Mexican cartel, exploded this week with new revelations of a cover-up, and emails which tie the scandal directly to the White House for the first time.

“Fast and Furious” was an attempt to intercept gun-trafficking that sent 2,000 guns to cartel operatives via straw buyers. Critics believe that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder saw the program as an opportunity to embarrass U.S.-based gun dealers, and help galvanize support for increased gun-control measures, while controlling where and how the guns would be “walked” across the border. But the operation went horribly wrong as the guns went unaccounted for, leading to the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry last December in Arizona, and the deaths of untold others inside Mexico – all using guns provided by the ATF.  Holder denied knowledge of the operation at a U.S. House hearing on May 3rd, but subsequent revelations clearly show both Holder and the White House had been informed about this program as it ran off the rails.

Rep. Alan West has called for Holder to resign or be fired as a result.

Now it has been revealed that after the death of Agent Terry, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley and  then-U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke colluded to cover-up the fact that Terry was killed using one of the guns from ‘Fast and Furious’.  Evidence shows that Hurley – who knew “almost immediately” that the guns could be traced to the program, contacted Burke, and they agreed to cover it up:

In an internal email the day after the murder, Hurley, and then-U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, decided not to disclose the connection, saying ” … this way we do not divulge our current case (Fast and Furious) or the Border Patrol shooting case.”

As Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said “The level of involvement of the United States Attorney’s Office … in the genesis and implementation of this case is striking.” Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) are investigating the scandal, and AG Holder’s knowledge and role in its implementation.

…(read more at Stand With Arizona)… now defunct

Fast and Furious e-mails reached at least three White House officials (HOT AIR)

New e-mails obtained yesterday by The Los Angeles Times show at least three national security officials received information about Operation Fast and Furious. An anonymous administration official says these e-mails don’t prove anyone in the White House knew about the covert “investigative tactics” used in the program — but they do show William Newell, then the ATF field supervisor for Arizona and New Mexico, was in close contact with Kevin O’Reilly, director of North American affairs for the White House national security staff, between July 2010 and February of this year.

In fact, Newell sought the White House’s help to persuade the Mexican government to let ATF agents recover U.S. guns across the border, and O’Reilly on several occasions sounded out Newell to see how efforts to combat gun trafficking in Arizona were going. In response to O’Reilly’s requests, Newell praised ATF agents’ work on “firearms trafficking investigations with direct links to Mexican” cartels.

O’Reilly forwarded the information Newell provided to two other officials – Dan Restrepo, the president’s senior Latin American advisor, and Greg Gatjanis, a White House national security official. But O’Reilly reassured Newell the information “would not leave NSS.” Newell answered, “Sure, just don’t want ATF HQ to find out, especially since this is what they should be doing (briefing you)!”

Evidence of another kind of cover-up in the scandal has surfaced, too. Late last night, Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office revealed 21 Fast and Furious guns have been found at violent crime scenes in Mexico….

…(Read more at HotAir)…

Fast and felonious: Obama gun warriors shoot themselves in the foot (WASHINGTON TIMES)

On Friday, the administration reluctantly released new and incriminating documents showing then-Special Agent William Newell with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) had discussed details of Fast and Furious in a series of emails with White House National Security Council staff member Kevin O’Reilly. In one of the communications, Mr. Newell gave Mr. O’Reilly a heads-up about an upcoming press conference announcing indictments in a dozen “straw purchaser” firearms trafficking cases and a Gun Runner Impact Teams performance report containing statistics on investigations.

The congressional probe is no longer limited to just the ATF. Early on, the White House denied it had any knowledge of the gunrunning program. Agent Newell, who headed the Phoenix, Ariz., office from which the scheme’s operations were directed, contradicted that claim when he testified on Capitol Hill in July. The just-released emails reveal that not only did briefings on the shady gambit reach inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but the information provided was extensive.

On its face, the ATF’s plan made no sense. Agents directed U.S. gun stores to sell semi-automatic rifles to front men who then smuggled the weapons into Mexico for resale to drug cartels. Agents were supposed to follow the firearms all the way to the lairs of the drug kingpins – except they had no realistic means of doing so. Thus, thousands of the guns have fueled bloody drug crimes south of the border.

Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, who is leading the House probe of the operation, has characterized the endeavor as “felony stupid.” Mr. Issa estimated the number of murders committed with Fast and Furious weapons at around 150, including the shooting death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, who was killed in December while on duty.

…(Read more at the Washington Times)…

From NEWSBUSTERS:

INGRAHAM: So they were literally screaming at you?

ATTKISSON: Yes. Well, the DOJ woman was just yelling at me. A guy from the White House–

INGRAHAM: Who was it?

ATTKISSON: On Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed at me–

INGRAHAM: Who was the person? Who was the person at Justice screaming?

ATTKISSON: Eric Schultz- oh, the person screaming was [DOJ spokeswoman] Tracy Schmaler. She was yelling, not screaming–

INGRAHAM: Oh, really?

ATKISSON: And the person who screamed at me was Eric Schultz at the White House.

INGRAHAM: Hmm- I thought we were supposed to be so transparent. This is a new era of transparency. And Pelosi was draining the swamp, and the White House was going to turn a new page, and that was actually good to hear. I mean, we were like- okay, that’s- we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. And then, the first time a reporter asked a serious question about, at least, a Justice Department move here, the reporter is yelled at and screamed at.

And I would imagine, Sharyl, that if- let’s say, a NBC reporter had been yelled at and screamed at by Karl Rove, we would have been hearing about it for years afterward (laughs) in the Bush administration. It would be, ‘Oh, those bullies over at the White House, once again, shutting down true inquiries into their goings-on behind closed doors.’

See AMERICAN THINKER as well.