But that’s a rather dry title, don’t you think? I much prefer BOOM goes the dynamite on Operation Fast & Furious.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, was sending a letter to President Obama on Tuesday arguing that Holder cannot investigate himself, and requesting the president instruct the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel.
The question is whether Holder committed perjury during a Judiciary Committee hearing on May 3.
If you read my post earlier today on the subject, you already know what happened: but in case you didn’t, the gist is that Attorney General Eric Holder claimed back in May to have only first heard of Fast & Furious at most a few weeks earlier. Unfortunately for Holder, documents have surfaced apparently showing that Holder had been briefed on the subject back in 2010 (which Holder’s spokesmen are currently denying: their claim is the risible one that the Attorney General doesn’t read all the memos sent to him by his assistant Attorney Generals). Holder then claimed that he misspoke, which leads to this epic sentence:
[House Oversight Chair Darrell] Issa told Fox News on Tuesday morning that Holder saying he didn’t understand the question rather than he didn’t know of the program is not a successful defense to perjury.
Yes, this is going to be fun. Particularly since CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson is telling us that the White House is losing its… well, I cannot say what the White House is losing and still maintain a basic decorum, but I suspect that you can guess from context.
[Laura] Ingraham: So they were literally screaming at you?
[Sharyl] Attkisson: Yes. Well the DOJ woman was just yelling at me. The guy from the White House on Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed at me. [Laura: Who was the person? Who was the person at Justice screaming?] Eric Schultz. Oh, the person screaming was [DOJ spokeswoman] Tracy Schmaler, she was yelling not screaming. And the person who screamed at me was Eric Schultz at the White House.”
(H/T: AoSHQ) Full interview on that here. Eric Schultz, by the way, is a former DSCC spokesflack who was tapped in June to run interference against Issa. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Schultz is kind of overpaid.
I’m going to end this with a special request from me, in my capacity as a partisan Republican hack: please resist appointing a special prosecutor, Mister President. Please, please, please. I am begging you to try to stonewall this.
Please.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
Bad idea. Prosecuter appointed by the admin can sit on his hands till well past the election and all parties concerned can stop co-operating with congress in light of an ongoing, “independant” investigation.