RUSH: Jay Carney, the spokeskid for President Obama at the White House, just got some questions on the executive privilege and Fast and Furious, and who do you think he blamed for Fast and Furious? You think Bush? You don’t have to stop and think about that for very long, Snerdley. Well, you’re right. Here’s Jay Carney blaming all of this on George W. Bush.
CARNEY: The problem of gun walking was a field-driven tactic that dated back to the previous administration, and it was this administration’s attorney general who ended it. In fact, the Justice Department has spent the past 14 months accommodating congressional investigators, including producing 7,600 pages of documents and testifying at 11 congressional hearings. Yet, Republicans insist on moving forward with an effort that Republicans and objective legal experts have noted is purely political. Given the economic challenges facing the country, we believe House Republicans should instead be engaged in efforts to create jobs and grow the economy rather than political theater.
RUSH: They’re falling apart up there. Every line of that is bogus. Not every line, but elements of every line are bogus. But, Mr. Carney, I would simply say that if you want to stand by what you said, why is there executive privilege? Why not just release these documents that show it’s Bush’s fault? If your guy stopped it, if you stopped Fast and Furious, you might want to call Brian Terry’s family and tell ’em that you stopped it, the dead border patroller. Call ’em up. Holder called ’em after he’d been shamed into doing it. But you call ’em, Jay, you call ’em and you tell ’em that Fast and Furious was brought to a screeching halt by this administration.
You tell ’em that Bush did it, and then release the document. It sounds like you’ve got a win-win here, Jay. You release the documents, we see that Bush did it all, and everybody on your team is off the hook. So why is there executive privilege, Jay? What are you hiding? Why is it necessary to hide the president’s involvement in this if there isn’t any? The only question here is, what is Obama hiding? It’s the question that needs to be asked again and then. What’s Obama hiding, and there is something. This is pathetic. “The problem of gun walking was a field-driven –” your own attorney general walked that back. He recanted that claim this week, Jay. They don’t care. They literally don’t care.
They’re just gonna go out there and say it, and they know the media’s gonna circle the wagons. This business about “Republicans insist on moving forward with an effort that Republicans and objective legal experts have noted is purely political. Given the economic challenges facing the country, we believe House Republicans instead should be engaged in effort to create jobs.” That’s Mitt Romney’s job, and he’s doing it. And he’s talking about it. And they don’t want that talked about. One of the reasons for this executive privilege, I am convinced, is to distract everybody’s attention from the economy.
This notion about 7,600 pages of documents, I wish I could remember where I read this yesterday. Some former Justice Department member was talking about this. That’s peanuts, 7,600 pages of documents compared to the number of documents that there are on this whole program is peanuts. And the administration is throwing that number around like Carney just did because it sounds big. That’s not pages, that’s documents. How many pages in a document? It changes document to document. But I’m telling you, I read yesterday from some noted expert here that this is peanuts. Testifying at 11 congressional — how many did they lie at, Jay? How many congressional hearings did your attorney general tell a lie? He could testify every day as far as we’re concerned, but if he lies, what’s it worth?
So you’ve got Holder recanting his testimony that Mukasey, the AG during Bush’s second term, was in charge of this. And Carney goes out the next day and contradicts what Holder said. It really is breathtaking. How do you assert executive privilege for a field-driven operation? Everything Jay Carney said, everything he said here was all over MSNBC yesterday. This is just talking points that somebody’s put together.
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