NRA: Obama's Routine Executive Privilege Claim Proves Our Crazy Fast And Furious Conspiracy Theory
Written by Timothy Johnson
Published
Since President Obama asserted executive privilege earlier this week over a set of Department of Justice internal documents, the National Rifle Association has been quick to claim that the president's action is proof at last for the organization's insane conspiracy theory that Operation Fast and Furious was actually designed as a nefarious plot against the Second Amendment.
But the NRA's “evidence” could not be more lacking, as the documents over which Obama asserted executive privilege were generated after the conclusion of the failed Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) operation. A June 19 letter sent from the Justice Department to Obama which asked the president assert his privilege clearly states that the request only covers documents “from after February 4, 2011 related to the Department's response to Congress.” Fast and Furious was terminated in January 2011. The documents deal with how DOJ handled congressional inquiries into the program, not its authorization.
That NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre has not actually seen the documents in question did little to temper his belief, expressed on NRA News, that the contents of the privileged documents prove that he was right about the Obama administration all along.
LAPIERRE: There must be something in those papers that just really stinks that they would be willing to walk into this briar patch and bust this whole issue out in the open.
GINNY SIMONE, NRA NEWS HOST: Do you think just maybe it has to do with what the NRA, and many others, have been talking about from the start? That this was planned, that this was about advancing an anti-gun agenda that this president had? Your thoughts?
LAPIERRE: Well my thoughts are that this was an attack on the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. That that's what Fast and Furious really was about. The fact is that's what they are trying to hide. That's what I believe is in these papers that they don't want out, is proof of that.
[...]
The president is trying to fog the issue. He's trying to say “I'm not attacking the Second Amendment.” I believe what's in these papers is proof that this administration was attacking the Second Amendment. They knew exactly what they were doing. This was about putting these guns down there in Mexico and then why they found them at crime scenes going, “Aha, we need more gun laws in the United States.” And that's what I believe is in these papers. And that's why I believe the president has joined with the attorney general to cover this whole thing up.
In an editorial for The Daily Caller, NRA's chief lobbyist, Chris Cox, echoed his boss' sentiments about Obama's exercise of executive privilege:
Moreover, Obama's decision to invoke “executive privilege” to hide these documents from the American people is a tacit admission that what the National Rifle Association has been saying since day one is true. Namely, that the inconceivable crimes committed under operation “Fast and Furious” were designed to support the Obama administration's gun-control agenda.
No members of leadership at the NRA have ever offered any hard evidence to prove this theory. The closest thing offered to a coherent thought on this subject has been the suggestion that because some Obama administration officials have supported gun violence prevention measures in the past, that Fast and Furious must comprise the means to enact such policies. Media Matters has previously noted this “evidence” is merely speculative.