Gunrunner: Withheld documents include correspondence between Eric Holder, his wife, and his mother

  When the Fast and Furious scandal which left Brian Terry, Jamie Zapata, and hundreds of Mexican nationals dead began to close in around Eric Holder Barack Obama claimed Executive Privilege and sealed the documents which I believe would have implicated Eric Holder and possibly Barack Obama.

  Judicial Watch had filed a lawsuit asking for a “Vaughn List” of the documents which were being withheld and last month a court ordered the Obama regime to provide Judicial Watch with this list. Today the Department of Injustice complied with the order.

  While a Vaughn List provides a list of documents which were withheld it does not provide the content of those documents, however there are some interesting tidbits which were learned as a result of this disclosure.

  Some of the withheld documents include correspondence between Eric Holder, his wife, and his mother.

The document details the Attorney General Holder’s personal involvement in managing the Justice Department’s strategy on media and Congressional investigations into the Fast and Furious scandal.  Notably, the document discloses that emails between Attorney General Holder and his wife Sharon Malone – as well as his mother – are being withheld under an extraordinary claim of executive privilege as well as a dubious claim of deliberative process privilege under the Freedom of Information Act.  The “First Lady of the Justice Department” is a physician and not a government employee.

Numerous emails that detail Attorney General Holder’s direct involvement in crafting talking points, the timing of public disclosures, and handling Congressional inquiries in the Fast and Furious matter.

President Obama has asserted executive privilege over nearly 20 email communications between Holder and his spouse Sharon Malone. The administration also claims that the records are also subject to withholding under the “deliberative process” exemption. This exemption ordinarily exempts from public disclosure records that could chill internal government deliberations.

• Numerous entries detail DOJ’s communications (including those of Eric Holder) concerning the White House about Fast and Furious.

• The scandal required the attention of virtually every top official of the DOJ and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). Communications to and from the United States Ambassador to Mexico about the Fast and Furious matter are also described.

• Many of the records are already publicly available such as letters from Congress, press clips, and typical agency communications. Ordinarily, these records would, in whole or part, be subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.  Few of the records seem to even implicate presidential decision-making and advice that might be subject to President Obama’s broad and unprecedented executive privilege claim.

Here is what Judicial Watch, while comparing Barack Obama to Nixon and also taking a shot at the Congress, had to say about this:

This document provides key information about the cover-up of Fast and Furious by Attorney General Eric Holder and other high-level officials of the Obama administration. Obama’s executive privilege claims over these records are a fraud and an abuse of his office.  There is no precedent for President Obama’s Nixonian assertion of executive privilege over these ordinary government agency records.  Americans will be astonished that Obama asserted executive privilege over Eric Holder’s emails to his wife about Fast and Furious.

Once again, Judicial Watch has proven itself more effective than Congress and the establishment media in providing basic oversight of this out-of-control Administration.  This Fast and Furious document provides dozens of leads for further congressional, media, and even criminal investigations.

  This seems to show that if Eric Holder was not involved in the initial scandal he was involved in the cover up. Beyond the obvious question of why personal correspondence between Eric Holder, his wife, and his mother is a State secret one also has to wonder why Judicial Watch has been more effective than the Congress in getting these documents. 

  Could it be that the Republican establishment is also involved in this? Is this why John Boehner has thwarted Darrell Issa’s attempt at learning the truth? Is this the Hegelian Dialectic at play?