Attorney General Eric Holder is shown during one of many trying moments for him during Thursday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing into Operation Fast and Furious. Since Holder last appeared before a Congressional committee on the subject, multiple e-mails, memos and notes from Justice Department staff became available to Congress. It is over the differences in these documents from Holder’s former testimony that he was brought back to testify.Things didn’t go well for Holder from the get-go. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, asked that Holder be placed under oath. Issa is somewhat suspicious of Holder’s veracity, to say the least. Holder had earlier refused to take the oath, and Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) did not want Holder to escape without answering questions, so he merely ruled that Holder was “deemed” to be under oath since he had sent Holder a letter reminding him of his responsibility to be truthful.
Lying under oath is perjury—a felony. But if a court were later to decide that Holder’s refusal to be placed under oath protected him from a perjury charge, he could still be found guilty of other statutory violations such as lying to Congress and impeding a Congressional inquiry. If a later Justice Department official were to pursue the matter, Holder would not get off entirely scot free. Smith’s compromise kept Holder in the room, and probably made him very nervous as well.
During the questioning, the proceedings got very heated more than a few times. Some of the various committee members threatened Holder with everything from impeachment to charges of contempt of Congress for his evasiveness. Issa called Holder’s testimony “outright lying,” and he had stacks of documents in front of him that seem to support that conclusion.
In one exchange, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) took a very combative line. “Do you think the buck stops with you?” he asked. Then, as Holder seemed to shrink behind the witness table, Sensenbrenner went on to remind Holder that lying to Congress is a federal crime. But he softened the charge by following up with “I don’t want to say you lied, but what are you going to do to clean up the mess?”
In his answer to the not-too-veiled charges of lying, Holder channeled Clinton’s “it all depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” Confronted with serious inconsistencies between known fact and supporting evidence and Holder’s prior testimony, he punted. His Justice Department had made a very unusual move a few days earlier by “withdrawing” a letter it had sent to the committee in answer to certain committee questions. The DOJ actually called its answers “misleading.” That withdrawal followed earlier testimony by ATF Special Agent William Newell that was also “withdrawn” as Newell termed his answers as “lacking completeness.”
Facing questions about these major inconsistencies and DOJ backtrackings, Holder was then asked by Sensenbrenner how “misleading” and “lying” were different from each other, if they are indeed different. Holder said that the difference between “lying” and “misleading” was state of mind. But Holder was merely tossing out a legal distinction that, though true, doesn’t apply to this matter. He hoped nobody would notice.
If one “misleads” because he has himself been misled or misinformed, and has a reasonable excuse for not knowing the true facts, there is no intent to lie. But if one misleads, knowing that the words used to mislead are incorrect, then “misleading” becomes “lying.” The DOJ, ATF and DEA testimony that Congress had already determined was intentionally misleading was available to Holder and his department long before Congress ever saw it. Ergo, he lied.
During the testimony, Democratic committee members frequently attempted to protect Holder from hard scrutiny and/or turn the investigation of Holder’s part in Fast and Furious into a forum on gun control. The spin was marvelous to behold. Attempting to prove how dangerous all weapons in the hands of individuals are, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) asked “how many firearms had been sold to Al Qaeda terrorists, to other convicted felons, to domestic violence perpetrators, and to white supremacists.”
He neglected to ask about how many had been sold to the Crips or the Bloods. But even if he had been an equal opportunity disarmer, the question would have been entirely irrelevant, given what the hearing was actually about. The hearing is about Operation Fast and Furious, why it was so poorly-planned and deadly in execution, and most importantly, who knew what, and when. But that didn’t stop Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California) from asking why there is no requirement for a federal firearms dealer to report, say, the sale of 100 AK-47s.
The final exchange was between Issa and Holder. Issa suggested contempt of Congress for Holder’s refusal to release committee-requested document without citing Constitutional or case law to support the refusal. Holder responded: “We will respond as other attorneys general and other Justice Departments have done.” Issa snapped back with: “That’s how John Mitchell responded (referring to the Watergate hearings of the Nixon administration).”
Holder, who has the same ability as Obama and Nixon to play the victim rather than the perpetrator, channeled McCarthy hearing defense counsel Joseph Welch and pleaded: “As they said at the McCarthy hearings, have you no shame?” Quick, get me a hankie. I need to wipe away the tears I’m shedding for poor, innocent, persecuted Eric Holder.
At the end of the hearings, Rep. Dan Lungren (R-California) summed up Holder’s testimony and the attempts of the Democrats to change the subject: “You screwed up, you admit you screwed up, but don’t use your screw-up as an attempt to justify your actions and extend your authority.”
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