Horwitz’s article also did not mention a document Holder has said the president cannot hide via executive privilege, a possible smoking-gun email showing that senior administration officials lied to Congress about Fast and Furious and knew a Feb. 2011 letter from the DOJ to Sen. Chuck Grassley was false nine months before the agency withdrew it.
The Washington Post is not the first friendly publication the DOJ has worked with to diffuse the Fast and Furious scandal.
In November, Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn exposed during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that Holder had not apologized to the family of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry months after his shooting death. Two firearms provided by Obama administration agencies to Mexican drug cartels were recovered from te scene of Terry’s murder.
Holder wrote an apology letter to the Terry family days later; but before Brian’s mother Josephine read it, the DOJ had leaked the letter to friendly writers at the Virginia-based media outlet Politico.
Politico printed the letter without challenging Holder on his decision to wait so long before writing or sending it.
Holder has also given an interview to the Obama-friendly New York Times, telling reporter Charlie Savage that Republicans were attacking him as a means of attacking Obama.
“This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him,” Holder told Savage, who printed the comment without challenging it. “Both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”
When he gave the New York Times interview, it wasn’t an election year yet, and Holder had been wrangling with Issa and Grassley for only about 10 months.
Savage later violated his publication’s ethics code by reporting false information about supposed Fast and Furious-related negotiations he said were ongoing between House Speaker John Boehner and Holder’s DOJ. In fact, no such negotiations existed.
