If you aren’t up to speed on the Fast and Furious scandal, I don’t blame you. The media was slow to the story, and the Justice Dept has dragged it out for months, but in a nutshell President Obama granted a last minute request by Attorney General Eric Holder to exert executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents to try and head off a contempt vote against Holder by Republicans in the House. If you aren’t up to speed on what Fast and Furious is really all about, the Ted Cruz camp put out this video that serves as a kind of primer on it.
Turns out that back in 2007 Obama wasn’t such a big fan of executive privilege.
Obama: “You know, there’s been a tendency on the part of this administration to — to try to hide behind executive privilege every time there’s something a little shaky that’s taking place. And I think, you know, the administration would be best served by coming clean on this. There doesn’t seem to be any national security issues involved with the U.S. attorney question. There doesn’t seem to be any justification for not offering up some clear, plausible rationale for why these — these U.S. attorneys were targeted when, by all assessments, they were doing an outstanding job. I think the American people deserve to know what was going on there.”
It seems that every time Pres. Obama does something controversial, there is a video of him earlier saying he would never do such a thing as President.
Grassley, ranking Republican of the Senate Judiciary Committee, slammed the White House on Wednesday for the move.
“How can the president assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement?” Grassley said in a statement. “How can the president exert executive privilege over documents he’s supposedly never seen? Is something very big being hidden to go to this extreme?”
As far as Fast and Furious goes? I think there is something a little shady taking place.