Obama Admin Attempts To Stall Release Of Fast And Furious Docs By Asking Court For Indefinite Delay

By Susan Duclos

It is ironic that just as the Obama administration is attempting to push to have certain types of weapons banned from law abiding Americans, that the Fast and Furious Operation, where the administration deliberately handed those very type of weapons to Mexican drug cartels in a failed sting operation and then lost track of those guns, is heating up.

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican
citizens have been murdered with those
Fast and Furious weapons, to date.

Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder is asking a federal court to indefinitely delay a lawsuit brought against it by Judicial Watch. (H/T The Jawa Report)

Via BG:

Judicial Watch had filed, on June 22, 2012, a Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents relating to Operation Fast and
Furious and “specifically [a]ll records subject to the claim of
executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June
20, 2012.”

The administration has refused to comply with Judicial Watch’s FOIA request, and in mid-September the group filed a lawsuit
challenging Holder’s denial. That lawsuit remains ongoing but within
the past week President Barack Obama’s administration filed what’s
called a “motion to stay” the suit. Such a motion is something that if
granted would delay the lawsuit indefinitely.

Long story short, Obama attempted to use a presidential deliberative process privilege to prevent the House of Representatives and others, from obtaining documents pertaining to the Fast and Furious Operation, but as BG explains, the Supreme Court has previously ruled that such a privilege assertion is invalidated by even the suspicion of
government wrongdoing. Obama, Holder, the Department of Justice, the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and virtually
everyone else involved in this scandal have admitted that government
wrongdoing actually took place in Operation Fast and Furious.

Judicial Watch Press Room has issued a release. (Full text of the release below)

Judicial Watch Files Brief Opposing Government Stonewalling:

Justice Department “has disparaged the public’s right to request records of its government”

 (Washington, DC) –Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a brief on January 15, 2013, in response to an Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) motion
to indefinitely delay consideration of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking access to Operation Fast and
Furious records withheld from Congress by President Obama under
executive privilege on June 20, 2012 (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:12-cv-01510)).

Rather than respond substantively to Judicial Watch’s FOIA lawsuit,
the DOJ argued in court that the lawsuit should be subject to a stay of
proceedings because it is “ancillary” to a separate lawsuit filed by the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee against the DOJ. The
Court “should let the process of negotiation and accommodation [between
the House Committee and the DOJ] run its course, and then decide with
the input of the parties whether and how this action may appropriately
proceed at that time,” the DOJ argued, effectively abrogating the FOIA. 
The Obama DOJ even suggested that the Judicial Watch litigation might
encourage the Congress to fight harder to get the same documents in
separate litigation.

Judicial Watch counters that FOIA demands a response and that its
lawsuit is more straightforward than the House lawsuit and ripe for
consideration on its merits. A decision on the House Committee lawsuit,
meanwhile, could be delayed for months, if not years:

This notion that [Judicial Watch’s]
lawsuit is in some way inferior [to the House lawsuit] is simply
incorrect. [Judicial Watch] has as much of a right under the law as the
House Committee to seek access to records of Defendant. In fact, since
Defendant does not challenge [Judicial Watch’s] claim on jurisdictional
grounds, it could be reasonably argued that [Judicial Watch’s] right is
greater – it is certainly clearer and simpler – than that of the House
Committee…Whereas [Judicial Watch’s] FOIA lawsuit is ripe for
adjudication on the merits, the House Committee suit could be months, if
not years, away from reaching the same stage.

The DOJ also argued that Judicial Watch’s lawsuit might somehow
interfere with negotiations between the president and Congress. Judicial
Watch countered: “Regardless of any potential resolution in that case,
Defendant in this action will still be required to satisfy its
obligations under FOIA, including justifying its withholdings. [Judicial
Watch’s] lawsuit simply does not vanish if and when the House Committee suit is resolved.”

Judicial Watch concludes: “[Judicial Watch] has a statutory right to
the requested records and to have Defendant’s denial of Plaintiff’s FOIA
request reviewed by this Court. [Judicial Watch’s] claim is now ripe
for adjudication, and [Judicial Watch] is prepared to brief the issues.
Defendant simply seeks to delay the date that it must justify its claims
of exemption. Defendant has not demonstrated why [Judicial Watch’s]
rights should be immoderately and oppressively delayed; it has only
disparaged public’s right to request records of its government. For the
foregoing reasons, [Judicial Watch] respectfully requests that
Defendant’s request for an indefinite stay of the proceedings be
denied.”

Fast and Furious was a DOJ/Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) “gun-running” operation
in which the Obama administration reportedly sold guns to Mexican drug
cartels in hopes that they would end up at crime scenes. Fast and
Furious weapons have been implicated in the murder of Border Patrol
Agent Brian Terry and countless others in Mexico.

Congressional investigators, led by Rep, Darryl Issa, Chairman of the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, have fought to secure
records related to the Fast and Furious program, but the DOJ continues
to withhold responsive records from disclosure. On June 20, 2012,
President Obama made a highly controversial decision to assert Executive Privilege
to shield the DOJ’s Fast and Furious records from disclosure. Executive
privilege is reserved to “protect” White House records, not the records
of federal agencies, which must be made available, subject to specific
exceptions, under the FOIA.

The president’s assertion of executive privilege came just hours
before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted to hold
Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress
for failing to respond to congressional subpoenas for Fast and Furious
records. On June 28, 2012, Congress voted 255-67 to hold Holder in
contempt. (A number of Democrats joined the vote, while other Democrats,
endorsing lawlessness, walked out in protest.) A second vote, 258-95,
authorized the pursuit of records through civil litigation in the
courts. Moreover, documents uncovered
by CBS News seem to indicate that Holder may have perjured himself
during congressional testimony, detailing what he knew about Fast and
Furious and when.

“It is beyond ironic that the Obama administration has initiated an
anti-gun violence push as it seeking to keep secret key documents about
its very own Fast and Furious gun walking scandal.  Getting beyond the
Obama administration’s smokescreen, this lawsuit is about a very simple
principle: the public’s right to know the full truth about an egregious
political scandal that led to the death of at least one American and
countless others in Mexico,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
“The American people are sick and tired of the Obama administration
trying to rewrite FOIA law to protect this president and his appointees.
Americans want answers about Fast and Furious killings and lies.”

Judicial Watch separately filed a FOIA lawsuit
against the ATF seeking access to records detailing communications
between ATF officials and a White House official regarding Fast and
Furious.