Impeach Eric Holder
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It's time for Congress to impeach Attorney General Eric Holder.
Congress may remove from office "all civil officers of the United States" if they are convicted of "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors," the Constitution says (Article II, Section 4).
Only the House of Representatives can impeach, which is comparable to indictment. The official is then tried by the Senate, where a two-thirds vote is required for conviction.
The Constitution doesn't say what constitutes "high crimes and misdemeanors," but perjury surely is among them. So is obstruction of justice.
Mr. Holder told the House Judiciary Committee on May 3 that he had "probably" heard about the Gunwalker scandal "for the first time over the last few weeks."
On Monday, Sharyl Attkisson reported on CBS that "new documents obtained by CBS News show [Mr. Holder] was sent briefings on [Gunwalker] as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress."
Gunwalker involved the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives permitting more than 2,000 guns to "walk" across the border to Mexican drug cartels in a misbegotten effort to figure out where the cartels were getting weapons.
"Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals, this was the plan," ATF Agent John Dodson testified June 15. "It was so mandated."
Among the guns were 34 .50-caliber sniper rifles, "approximately the number of sniper rifles a Marine infantry regiment takes into battle," noted ATF Agent Carlos Canino.
More than 200 of their citizens have been killed by Gunwalker guns, according to the Mexican attorney general. They've been found at 11 crime scenes in the United States.
Background checks were bypassed so "straw buyers" could purchase guns for the cartels. And in a June 1, 2010 letter, an ATF supervisor ordered a gun shop owner to sell four guns directly to an ATF agent, who resold them to known illegal buyers.
The documents which contradicted Mr. Holder's testimony were part of the Justice Department's response Sept. 30 to Congress' request for documents. Among them was an email from William Newell, the ATF agent in charge of the Phoenix office, to a White House aide.
Mr. Newell's email contained an arrow chart of where Gunwalker guns ended up. It contradicts his testimony to the House Oversight Committee in July that he hadn't discussed specifics of the case with the White House aide. His testimony "lacked clarity" and wasn't complete, Mr. Newell has admitted.
First Published October 9, 2011 12:00 am
