#rsrh Operation Fast & Furious Fallout: Patrick J. Cunningham takes the Fifth.

Executive summary: Patrick Cunningham is the Criminal Division chief of the Arizona US Attorney’s office; and recently he was subpoenaed by Congress over his role in Operation Fast & Furious, which is of course the disastrous program where the federal government put guns in the hands of Mexican narco-terrorist gangs without anything like proper safeguards.  The thing is, Cunningham apparently thinks that he’s about to be thrown to Darrell Issa’s wolves by a Department of Justice trying to deflect scrutiny from Attorney General Eric Holder, and Cunningham has no intention of being the fall guy.  So he’s sent a letter to Oversight indicating that he refuses to answer questions, on the grounds that it might incriminate him.

Or, more accurately, he refuses to answer questions under the current circumstances.  Cunningham feels that “he now finds himself caugbt in the middle of a dispute between the Legislative Branch and the Executive Branch,” to quote the letter; which implies that if the Legislative Branch would be inclined to, say, be reasonable about certain things then Cunningham might be likewise reasonable about testifying.

If all of this sounds baroque: well, yes, it is.  I’d call it ‘fun,’ except of course that the Justice Department got people out and out killed with this stupid Fast & Furious project of theirs.

Moe Lane