Thread: BREAKING: Judge Orders DOJ to Release Fast and Furious Documents Withheld From Congre

BREAKING: Judge Orders DOJ to Release Fast and Furious Documents Withheld From Congress Under Obama Executive Privilege Claim

Katie Pavlich |
Jul 31, 2014





Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit pursued against the Department of Justice by government watchdog Judicial Watch, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ruled documents being withheld from Congress under President Obama's claim of executive privilege must be turned over. Obama made the claim on the same day Attorney General Eric Holder was voted in criminal and civil contempt of Congress in June 2012.

"This order forces the Obama DOJ, for the first time, to provide a detailed listing of all documents that it has withheld from Congress and the American people for years about the deadly Fast and Furious gun running scandal," Judicial Watch released in a statement.The FOIA lawsuit has been ongoing for 16-months and is now proceeding after a lengthy delay. The Justice Department originally asked the court for an indefinite hold on a FOIA request from Judicial Watch, citing executive privilege and an ongoing investigation. That indefinite hold request was shot down more than a year ago.

The documentation DOJ is required to now turn over is a "Vaughn index" of "all requested Fast and Furious materials from a June 2012 Judicial Watch FOIA request."

A Vaughn index must: (1) identify each document withheld; (2) state the statutory exemption claimed; and (3) explain how disclosure would damage the interests protected by the claimed exemption." In ordering the DOJ to provide Judicial Watch the Vaughn index, the Court ruled, “In this circuit, when an agency is withholding documents under exemption claims, courts require that the agency provide a Vaughn index so that the FOIA requester – at a distinct informational disadvantage – may test the agency’s claims.”

“Once again, Judicial Watch has beat Congress to the punch in getting key information about another Obama scandal – this time, the Fast and Furious outrage,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “A federal court has ordered the Obama administration to produce information that could, for the first time, provide specific details who in the administration is responsible for Fast and Furious lies to Congress and the American people. This is a battle that put Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, saw Nixonian assertions of executive privilege by Barack Obama, and a hapless Congress in face of all this lawlessness. Finally, we may get some accountability for Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and the countless others murdered as a result of the insanely reckless Obama administration program.”

This is a huge step forward.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/07/31/judge-orders-doj-to-release-documents-withheld-from-congress-under-obama-executive-privilege-claim-n1873165

RELATED

http://www.alipac.us/f12/suspect-bor...ted-us-308596/

We'll see how far they get with that one. So far this administration has completely ignored Congress.

Wonder if he will get amnesty.

“Fast And Furious” Investigation About To Bust Open, Holder Soon To Be Impeached

As much as the current administration would like for just one of its nearly countless scandals to disappear, America is still struggling to hold both Obama and Holder accountable. While the rest of the world was distracted by its many other crises, a Federal Judge just ordered that incriminating documents pertaining to the failed “Fast and Furious” operation be handed over.
For those of you unaware, Operation Fast and Furious was an attempt to track weapons once they had been sold illegally. After handing over these once legal firearms however, they quickly lost track of them resulting in the deaths of not only many Mexicans but Americans as well.
In an attempt to cover up their role in the spilling of American blood, Obama quickly used Executive Action to seal any and all documents that could be their downfall. Holder furthered their efforts and even managed to get his smug butt charged with being in contempt of Congress – despite the spineless to scared to deal out a consequence for his crimes.
Well, Judicial Watch – a governmental watchdog organization – recently upped the ante by suing the lawless Department of Justice and actually winning where a Federal Judge rule the documents be handed over immediately. According to Judicial Watch, “This order forces the Obama DOJ, for the first time, to provide a detailed listing of all documents that it has withheld from Congress and the American people for years about the deadly Fast and Furious gun running scandal.”
The group’s President, Tom Fitton, further added:

“Once again, Judicial Watch has beat Congress to the punch in getting key information about another Obama scandal – this time, the Fast and Furious outrage. A federal court has ordered the Obama administration to produce information that could, for the first time, provide specific details who in the administration is responsible for Fast and Furious lies to Congress and the American people. This is a battle that put Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, saw Nixonian assertions of executive privilege by Barack Obama, and a hapless Congress in face of all this lawlessness. Finally, we may get some accountability for Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and the countless others murdered as a result of the insanely reckless Obama administration program.”

If it comes to light that Holder was not only in contempt of Congress, but blatantly dishonest under oath, this could surly end his reign of terror and the ability for Obama to do and act how he pleases despite the law. Furthermore, if these documents prove that the scandal goes all the way up the chain of the command, right to the White House, it could also mean the end of Obama’s presidency as well.
What do you guys think of this – will Obama and Holder actually do as they’re told and hand over the documents that could lead to their downfall or will they continue to do as they always do? Feel free to let us know in the comments below.
H/T: Mr. Conservative

http://tellmenow.com/2014/08/fast-an...-be-impeached/

Federal Court Orders Obama DOJ to Turn Over All Withheld Fast and Furious Documents

Tim Brown 53 mins ago


Government watchdog group Judicial Watch won a major victory in federal court earlier this month, in which the US District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the Obama Justice Department to turn over information requested by Judicial Watch in a Freedom of Information Act request concerning Operation Fast and Furious. Judicial Watch had requested all of the documents that Obama attempted to withhold from Congress under claims of executive privilege, for which ultimately Attorney General Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress.

According to Judicial Watch:

The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates lifted a lengthy 16-month delay of this open records lawsuit. This order forces the Obama DOJ, for the first time and by October 1, 2014, to provide a detailed listing of all documents that it has withheld from Congress and the American people for years about the deadly Fast and Furious gun running scandal.

The DOJ opposed the Judicial Watch action, claiming it would interfere with the department's continuing litigation with the House Oversight Committee concerning these Fast and Furious documents subpoenaed in October 2011. In September 2012, Obama asserted executive privilege over the documents. In the July 2014 opinion overruling the Obama Justice Department's request for an almost indefinite hold on Judicial Watch's legal right obtains this information under the Freedom of Information Act Bates said:

In the [February 15, 2013] order granting the stay, this court explicitly noted that the DOJ 'does not seek, and the court will not award, an indefinite stay pending ultimate resolution of the House Committee litigation,' and that 'the benefits of delaying this case might well [become] too attenuated to justify any further delay" …

Because many of the issues to be resolved in this case do not overlap with the House committee, and because resolving those issues will not risk upsetting the delicate balance of powers in subpoena disputes between the political branches, the Court will require DOJ to produce a Vaughn index here.

In fact, the court suggested that disclosing information to Judicial Watch might actually resolve the legal dispute now before Judge Amy Berman Jackson between the Obama administration and Congress:

True, nothing in the subpoena enforcement context of House Committee would require DOJ to produce a particularized description of the withheld documents…But this is a FOIA case, and since 1973, when Vaughn was decided, courts in this circuit have required agencies to justify their FOIA withholdings on a particularized basis. And doing so here will not prematurely expose or resolve the executive privilege issues ahead of Judge Jackson and the political branches; it will merely permit the parties and this Court to cull from the dispute any documents as to which a valid, non-executive privilege reason for withholding exists, thereby narrowing or perhaps even resolving the case. To the extent DOJ argues that the mere production of the Vaughn index—not involving the release of any documents in dispute—would alter the historical balance of powers between the branches, any unbalancing would result from FOIA itself, a law passed by Congress and signed into law by the President, and which this Court cannot ignore forever.

Former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who was one of the few investigative journalists in the mainstream media to delve into Obama's scandals, also has many long-standing Freedom of Information Act requests concerning Operation Fast and Furious.

She writes, "he Justice Department has long claimed that allowing the Judicial Watch lawsuit to move forward would interfere with its ongoing lawsuit in which the House Oversight Committee is suing for the same documents."
According to Attkisson, because of the court's ruling "the Department of Justice must turn over an index describing all of the material it's been holding back since September of 2012."
The "Vaughn Index," as it is referred to, must be turned over by October 1, 2014. According to the Office of Government Information Services, this index "is a document that agencies prepare in FOIA litigation to justify each withholding of information under a FOIA exemption."
This index must:

1. identify each document withheld;
2. state the statutory exemption claimed; and
3. explain how disclosure would damage the interests protected by the claimed exemption.

It's a great victory, and in many ways it may solve the dispute between Congress and the Obama administration, and more importantly, it advances the public interest,"Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told The Daily Caller.
"We knew — as a result of filing the request and that if we had to file a lawsuit –that we would at least get a listing of what documents were an issue and details about those documents that would provide information that the public did not have and that Congress was specifically seeking," he said.
The only question now is what court will Obama seek to appeal to so that he can get the ruling overturned. Perhaps, if there is no further ruling the American people will finally get to see the documents that we've been waiting years to see and possibly they would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt the premeditated lawlessness, not incompetence, of this administration with regards to gun trafficking and arming Mexican drug cartels.
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Human Events

Obama's bad month is about to get a lot worse...

Read the decision no liberal wanted to hear:



This Judge Order Is Really Going to Piss Off Obama and Eric Holder
Stonewall tactics from Obama and Holder begin to crumble, just in time for the...
humanevents.com

DOJ ordered to release list of Fast & Furious documents Obama protected with executive privilege


By: John Hayward
8/1/2014 09:34 AM

As with Obama’s other scandals, his delaying tactics worked. Operation Fast and Furious, one of the most astounding abuses of power and cover-ups in American history, is a footnote now, a cobwebbed bit of “old news” the media barely covered when it was fresh, and now regards as a fading partisan obsession. It would have been the biggest story in the world under a Republican president, of course, and such a president’s last-ditch stonewall tactic of protecting vital documents with an absurd claim of executive privilege would have turned him, forever, into the second coming of Tricky Dick Nixon. We’d have at least one big Hollywood movie about the Fast and Furious saga by now, with Oscar consideration for writers, director, and whoever played slain Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.
At long last, the stonewall has chipped a little, as the Justice Department has been ordered by a federal judge to release a list of the documents President Obama didn’t want the American people and their representatives to see. It’s just a list or “index” of the documents, mind you, but it’s a start. No thanks whatsoever to the vaunted “mainstream media” and its “hard-hitting investigative reporters,” of course; it’s the result of yet another Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch. Big Media thinks a story is over at the precise moment Obama’s flacks tell them it’s over, so they don’t file a lot of FOIA lawsuits these days.
For those who didn’t follow the Fast and Furious story – which some major media outlets didn’t mention at all until they were forced to explain why Attorney General Eric Holder had been held in contempt of Congress – it was a massive gun-running program conducted by the ATF, with the assistance of quite a few other agencies of the Obama Administration, pushing a huge volume of American firearms across the border into the hands of Mexican drug gangs. The objective was supposedly to follow the weapons to their ultimate criminal end users, but no real effort was made to follow the guns, leading to suspicious that the true ulterior motive of the initiative was to pump up Obama talking points about how lax American gun laws were flooding Mexico with arms. A large number of people ended up getting killed with Fast and Furious guns, including Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Fast and Furious weapons have been flowing back into American cities as well, skipping across the same border that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid described recently as “secure.”
Under the most benevolent interpretation, Operation Fast and Furious was an astonishing failure of managerial oversight, but for some reason Attorney General Holder still has his job. (He survived by deploying the strongest form of the Obama Administration’s Incompetence Defense seen up to that point, claiming that he had no idea what the Justice Department he nominally heads was up to, because he doesn’t read his mail. That was necessary because, after a congressional oversight root canal, it was discovered that Holder had been given written notice about the status of the operation.)
When things started looking really ugly, President Obama swooped in to save Holder by throwing a blanket of executive privilege over the documents his Attorney General had been defying subpoenas to protect. The House Oversight Committee has undertaken litigation to enforce its subpoenas, but the last-ditch stonewall tactic worked beautifully, since almost a year and a half has gone by, Obama got re-elected, and the media is back to thinking Fast and Furious has something to do with Vin Diesel.
Judicial Watch has been using the Freedom of Information Act to demand access to the hidden documents, but the Justice Department stymied the request by claiming it would interfere with their ongoing court battle against the House of Representatives. (In other words: the public can’t see these documents because that would interfere with our legal effort to prevent Congress from seeing these documents!)
D.C. District Court Judge John D. Bates took the exact opposite view, as Judicial Watch notes in its press release, saying that compliance with the FOIA request may help resolve the struggle between DOJ and House Oversight:

True, nothing in the subpoena enforcement context of House Committee would require DOJ to produce a particularized description of the withheld documents…But this is a FOIA case, and since 1973, when Vaughn was decided, courts in this circuit have required agencies to justify their FOIA withholdings on a particularized basis. And doing so here will not prematurely expose or resolve the executive privilege issues ahead of Judge Jackson and the political branches; it will merely permit the parties and this Court to cull from the dispute any documents as to which a valid, non-executive privilege reason for withholding exists, thereby narrowing or perhaps even resolving the case. To the extent DOJ argues that the mere production of the Vaughn index—not involving the release of any documents in dispute—would alter the historical balance of powers between the branches, any unbalancing would result from FOIA itself, a law passed by Congress and signed into law by the President, and which this Court cannot ignore forever.

The index DOJ has been ordered to release by October 1 would include both a description of each withheld document, and a full explanation of how its release would damage criminal cases, national security, etc. As the court noted, it’s rather difficult to test the validity of executive privilege claims without any knowledge of what is being protected, or why its release would supposedly be disastrous for something more important than the President’s political fortunes.
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton also had Nixon on his mind when taking his victory lap over the judge’s order: “A federal court has ordered the Obama administration to produce information that could, for the first time, provide specific details who in the administration is responsible for Fast and Furious lies to Congress and the American people. This is a battle that put Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, saw Nixonian assertions of executive privilege by Barack Obama, and a hapless Congress in face of all this lawlessness. Finally, we may get some accountability for Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and the countless others murdered as a result of the insanely reckless Obama administration program.”
The stonewall tactics deployed by Obama and Holder might end up failing in one mischievous respect: the deadline for releasing that potentially embarrassing list of buried documents is just over a month before the midterm election. The important thing was getting Obama re-elected, of course, but Democrats already looking at a rough November may come to resent a strategy that brings the Fast and Furious story back to life right before voters head to the polls… with the ineptitude of the Obama Administration, and border security, already on their minds.

http://humanevents.com/2014/08/01/do...paign=heupdate

Fast and Furious Scandal


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Published on Jun 11, 2012
The Fast and Furious Scandal has gone on too long, we need answers now.

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Why do we continue to call this Fast and Furious incident a scandal, it isn't a scandal, it is a crime!!!! These people need to be arrested for not up holding their Oath of Office, the Constitution and not doing their job of protecting the American People against all enemies foriegn and domestic...They are colluding and selling guns to a foreign country..They are Traitors to America. Arrest and Convict. What part of that isn't getting through. When is enough from these crooks in Charge, how much longer do we need to wait for these politicians to get on with this and do the job they were elected to do..Protect and Serve America!!!!

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YOU ALL LIE!!!!!