Mr. “Fast and Furious” should be put in a Mexican prison for allowing guns to be received by the Drug Cartels.
Former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder defended the use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to spy on the Trump campaign Monday, during an interview with comedian Stephen Colbert.
“No idea. I signed a lot,” Holder said on “The Late Show.” “A lot, a lot, a lot. That’s more than a little.”
Holder also said he’s glanced at the FISA warrant regarding former Trump adviser Carter Page, but has not read it in full.
How Can Anyone Believe What Eric Holder Says?
“I’ve looked at it. I’ve not read it fully, no,” he replied. Holder said President Donald Trump should not feel exonerated by the release of the FISA warrant and slammed California GOP Rep. Devin Nunes for his work on bringing the information to light.
“I’m serious, if you look at it, it goes totally contrary to that which he says it’s going to contain. Devin Nunes is proven to be totally wrong,” Holder said. “It is really one of these questions of ‘who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?’ You just look at it and you can see that it is — as I said, paints just a totally different picture than what the House Republicans and this president has said.”
Holder claimed the warrant wasn’t strictly based on the Steele dossier, but a litany of facts and evidence he failed to mention during the interview.
“There are these things called facts, and then there’s this other stuff,” Holder concluded. “They still exist. The sun’s the center of the solar system, that’s still true. There are certain facts. And if you look at this FISA warrant, you will see that it is not simply based, as they’ve been trying to say — it’s all based on the Steele dossier. It is clear that it is not.”
This MoFo got some balls to be talking about “Derelict in His Duties.
On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” former US Attorney General Eric Holder argued that there is an obstruction of justice case against President Trump and Tom Steyer is correct that President Trump is “derelict in his duties.
Holder stated, “I think that you technically have an obstruction of justice case that already exists. And I’ve known Bob Mueller for 20-30 years, my guess is he is just trying to make the case as good as he possibly can. … But I think Steyer is absolutely right, in the sense that Trump is derelict in his duties. We were attacked.
Why is this bastard not in jail?
I mean, it wasn’t a physical attack. It was an electronic attack on the most vital of our systems. And he’s done absolutely nothing to prepare us for what is to come. Because they’re still coming. They’re going to come in 2018. They’re going to come in 2020. And he’s done nothing to hold the Russians accountable, in spite of the fact that, in this dysfunctional world we have — this dysfunctional Congress, passed sanctions, that he has refused to implement. And that, for me, is breathtaking, unforgivable, and ultimately, something the American people have to hold him responsible for.”
Attorney General Eric Holder vigorously denied a “cover-up” by the Justice Department over “Operation Fast and Furious,” telling a House panel investigating the botched gun-running program that he has nothing to hide and suggesting the probe is a “political” effort to embarrass the administration.
“There’s no attempt at any kind of cover-up,” Holder told lawmakers well into a hearing about whether he had been forthright in responding to requests of the House Oversight and Government Relations Committee led by Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif.
Issa threatens contempt proceeding against Holder if Justice fails to comply with Fast and Furious subpoenas Family of murdered Border Patrol agent files $25M claim against ATF GOP report: Justice officials were on top of Fast and Furious
“We’re not going to be hiding behind any kind of privileges or anything,” he said.
The hearing came after Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, his Senate partner in the probe, asserted that top Justice officials are covering up events surrounding the flawed gun-smuggling probe.
Issa made the accusation in a letter threatening to seek a contempt of Congress ruling against Holder for failing to turn over congressionally subpoenaed documents that were created after problems with Fast and Furious came to light.
Republicans also released a report in the hours ahead of the hearing claiming that Justice Department officials “had much greater knowledge of, and involvement in, Fast and Furious than it has previously acknowledged.”
Asked whether his assistants, Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler or Assistant Attorney Lanny Breuer, head of the department’s Criminal Division, ever authorized gunwalking or the tactics employed in Fast and Furious, Holder responded not to his knowledge.
“Not only did I not authorize those tactics, when I found out about them I told the field and everybody in the United States Department of Justice that those tactics had to stop. That they were not acceptable and that gunwalking was to stop. That was what my reaction [was] to my finding out about the use of that technique,” he added.
He added that he doesn’t think that the situation warranted the kind of response Republicans were giving after his department provided thousands of documents, and planned to deliver more.
Holder also rejected arguments that his handling of the case had lost him any support for the effort he was putting forth as attorney general.
“I don’t think the American people have lost trust in me. … This has become political, I get that,” he said.
But Holder also said no one has been punished “yet” in the case, despite the fact that lost guns from the operation ended up at the crime scene where U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered in December 2010.
Terry’s family has informed the U.S. government that it has six months to respond to its inquiry into Terry’s death or face a $25 million lawsuit.
In the botched operation, more than 1,400 weapons sold to low-level straw purchasers believed to be supplying Mexican drug gangs and other criminals were lost during tracking by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents. Another 700 firearms connected to suspects in the investigation have been recovered, some from crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S., including in Nogales, Ariz., where Terry was killed.
Holder said he didn’t learn about Terry’s murder until 24 hours after his death, and at the time did not hear that weapons tied to Fast and Furious were at the scene.
“I didn’t know about Operation Fast and Furious until the beginning parts of 2011 after I received that letter from Senator Grassley, I guess at the end of January and then that was about Operation Gun Runner. I actually learned about the Fast and Furious operation in February of that year.”
Holder told the committee, “I’m not sure exactly how I found out about the term, ‘Fast and Furious.'” He testified repeatedly that he never authorized the controversial tactics employed in the operation.
“There is no attempt at any kind of cover-up,” Holder said. “We have shared huge amounts of information” and will continue to do so, he said.
But Holder said under questioning that he has not disciplined anyone for his role in the controversial operation.
“No I have not as yet — as yet,” Holder said when questioned by Issa on the matter. “There have been personnel changes made at ATF. We obviously have a new U.S. attorney in Arizona. We have made personnel switches at ATF. People have been moved out of positions.”
Holder’s statements on the Justice Department’s role in the operation did not sit well with Republican lawmakers on the committee, who accused the attorney general of intentionally withholding key documents in the case.
“The conclusion that I come to is there are some things in there that’s being hidden that you don’t want us to see,” said Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind. “We have every right under the Constitution to check on what you’re doing… So for you to deny this committee anything like that is just dead wrong and I don’t think you’re going to find any way that you can do it.”
Burton went on to say that 93,000 documents related to the operation are being withheld by the Justice Department even though they’ve been turned over internally to the department’s inspector general, a political appointee, Burton said.
“And you’re saying, well, the separation of powers prohibits you from (delivering them to Congress). That’s baloney. That is just baloney,” Burton said.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, also questioned Holder’s having not discussed the case with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
“When people know that I’m going to be the subject of these kinds of hearings, you know six times and all that, nobody necessarily wants to get involved in these kinds of things or get dragged into it,” Holder responded.
Issa told Holder the committee will do what is necessary to obtain the information, “If you do not find a legitimate basis to deny us the material we’ve asked for.”
Holder said earlier during testimony that he would release additional materials “to the extent that I can.”
In Holder’s defense, Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., claimed the committee has “not obtained one shred of evidence that would contradict your testimony.”
“Not one witness, not one document, not one e-mail, and still some continue to suggest that you did personally authorize gunwalking and the tactics in Operation Fast and Furious.”
