Gunrunner: Kenneth Melson reassigned, Arizona Attorney General resigns

  We are beginning to see some fallout from the failed Obama regime’s Operation Gunrunner program. Today the acting head of the ATF, Kenneth Melson, was reassigned to another position within the Department of “Justice” and  Dennis Burke, Attorney General of Arizona–appointed by Janet Napolitano–resigned.

  I’ll start with Dennis Burke; this is the man who refused to grant murdered Border Patrol Brian Terry’s family victim status at his upcoming murder trial. The families of murder victims regularly ask for victim status and it is almost always granted, usually any objection to the request is made by the defendant’s lawyer, but in this case the request was denied by the prosecutors. This is highly unusual and it appears as if Dennis Burke made this decision to protect his own ass in case there is a civil suit to follow. Here is what I wrote about this when the news first broke:

   Dennis Burke appears to be saying that the sale of the weapons to Avila wasn’t what killed Brian Terry, but rather it was Avila’s actions after he purchased the weapon that killed Brian Terry, therefore there were no victims directly related to the illegal sale of the murder weapon. I have to say it is quite interesting to hear someone on the left use the guns don’t kill people, people kill people defense usually reserved for second amendment advocates and routinely ridiculed by the left. Funny how that works out now that the federal government should be considered an accessory before the fact in a murder case, isn’t it?

  It was Dennis Burke’s office which sold the weapons which turned up at the murder site of Brian Terry, so it seems to me that there is a conflict of interest in Dennis Burke’s involvement as a United States attorney in this case; it appears pretty obvious that Dennis Burke is more interested in trying to coverup the extent of the involvement his office had in the crimes which were committed than he is with providing justice to the people Brian Terry left behind. By refusing to admit that there were victims other than “society in general” he is trying to downplay the government’s role in this murder, as well as the seriousness of the situation his office and the DOJ fermented in the first place.

  Dennis Burke’s department is the same department which sold the weapons that killed Brian Terry; this is why he chose to use the guns don’t kill people, people kill people defense when denying Brian Terry’s family victim status. To grant the family victim status would have been to incriminate his department and he was more interested in protecting the department than he was in protecting the Terry family during this case.

  Dennis Burke is now gone–hanging his head in shame–as he should be and while we are finally beginning to see some fallout for this deadly program this is only the beginning. I expect more to follow.

  Now onto the acting head of the ATF, Kenneth Melson; this is a more tricky case to get to the bottom of, but I will try to weave through what we know about Mister Melson.

  Early on in Darrell Issa’s investigation into Operation Gunrunner, Eric Holder tried to end the controversy by using Kenneth Melson as the fall guy. Eric Holder hoped that by demanding the resignation of Kenneth Melson that Darrell Issa would be satisfied that justice was served and would move on to something else. But there were two problems with this; first, Darrell Issa said this wasn’t good enough because the authorization for this operation had to come from someone above Kenneth Melson; and second, Kenneth Melson refused to resign claiming that he wanted his day in court.

  Eric Holder tried to deny Kenneth Melson his day in court by refusing to let him testify–most likely because he knew what Kenneth Melson knew–but Melson finally had his day in court when he held a secret meeting with Darrell Issa’s Oversight Committee, using his own lawyers instead of DOJ lawyers so that he could tell the truth and not the watered down truth the DOJ lawyers would have preferred.

  Did Kenneth Melson’s testimony clear his name? In my opinion it did not, but he did testify that this scandal goes up much higher, and there is no way that this scandal could  be authorized by the acting head of the ATF. He was involved in this scandal, and although he did not authorize it he still must go in my opinion.

 While Kenneth Melson claimed that he wasn’t going to resign because he wanted to tell his side of the story, it is now being reported that there might be another reason for him wanting to hold onto his position. It turns out he may have really been concerned about losing his government pension.

  By refusing to resign, and by remaining in the DOJ, Kenneth Melson will retain his pension. While I used to be somewhat sympatric to Kenneth Melson’s plight because of Eric Holder’s attempt to blame him solely for Operation Gunrunner, I am sympatric to him no longer because he was directly involved in the program and should be punished along with everyone else who knew about and participated in this disastrous policy.

  It seems on the surface that Kenneth Melson got exactly what he wanted with this new transfer; he leveraged his knowledge of the operation to secure himself a new position within the DOJ and managed to hold onto his pension. It appears as if Eric Holder has basically paid Kenneth Melson for his silence, and this is not the first instance of Eric Holder buying a person’s silence in this case because we have already seen three people who were directly involved in the Gunrunner scandal promoted and it seems likely to me that this was in return for a guarantee for their silence moving forward–we can just add Kenneth Melson’s name to the list of people that Eric Holder has bought off.

  I am of the opinion that the Department of “Justice” has acted criminally, if not before the scandal came to light certainly afterwards as they continue to cover up this issue. There have been reports that Eric Holder has been obstructing the investigation and intimidating witnesses, and if these are not criminal offenses I simply do not know what is.

  The fact that four people directly involved in this deadly program have either been promoted or reassigned while only one person has been forced to resign is totally unacceptable and I expect that when the Congress reconvenes after its August recess that Darrel Issa will expand his investigation to include this matter.