In a statement released to media today, the Obama White House claimed that there is no cover-up regarding Fast and Furious.
“With millions of Americans still struggling to pay the bills, Republicans announced at the beginning of this year that one of their top priorities was to investigate the Administration and damage the President politically. We are ten days away from the expiration of federal transportation funding which guarantees jobs for almost a million construction workers because Congress hasn’t passed a transportation bill. We are eleven days away from nearly seven and a half million students seeing their loan rates double because Congress hasn’t acted to stop it. But instead of creating jobs or strengthening the middle-class, Congressional Republicans are spending their time on a politically-motivated, taxpayer-funded election-year fishing expedition.
The problem of gunwalking 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 fourteen months accommodating Congressional investigators, producing 7,600 pages of documents, and testifying at eleven 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 that House Republicans should work with the rest of Congress and the President to create more jobs, not more political theater.”
By invoking executive privilege to deny documents subpoenaed by Congress back in October 2011, which was not an election year as the statement asserts, Fast and Furious has by definition become a White House cover-up (it was already a department-level cover-up). The president is actively covering up something, the only question now is a simple one: “What is he covering up?”
The White House has also announced that it will not hold a press briefing today, sparing spokesman Jay Carney a rough afternoon. At least, until tomorrow.
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