A columnist for the Arizona Republic has come to the defense of his friend Patrick Cunningham, who recently resigned as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Arizona amid questions over his role in Fast and Furious.
Doug MacEachern, the columnist, wrote that Cunningham has been subjected to a “political witch hunt.” He also dropped the interesting tidbit that Cunningham is a Republican.
The former chief of the Arizona Office’s Criminal Division drew the ire of House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) by invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when faced with compulsory testimony about the botched gun-walking operation earlier this month. And then headlines focused on him again after Democrats on the House committee released a report that placed the Fast and Furious blame on years of dysfunction within the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s office. He ultimately resigned last week.
Patrick Cunningham
Now, details about Cunningham’s political and career life are trickling out, with MacEachern writing in his column that the former federal prosecutor has been subjected to a “political with hunt.” MacEachern, who admits Cunningham is a personal friend, writes that “he has been a dutiful civil servant for 32 years. A former judge advocate general Army officer. A pillar of his community.”
“He’s a good and decent guy who is paying out his life savings now on lawyer bills and is getter a sterling reputation sullied because it suits both [Attorney General] Eric Holder and Darrell Issa,” the columnist writes.
MacEachern blasts both sides of the aisle, saying neither Holder nor Issa care about Cunningham. He writes that since the Republican-led House committee can’t get at Holder, they are going after Cunningham. This is “blood sport,” he writes, and they need a scapegoat — Cunningham fits the bill.
“With both sides out to get him is it any wonder he is refusing to testify before Issa’s committee?” the columnist writes.
MacEachern also writes that Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) is a player in the House committee’s hunt to ruin Cunningham. Â He writes that Gosar believes Fast and Furious was a Democratic strategy to convince American voters to support more restrictions on gun purchases.
Gosar responded in an Arizona Republic column of his own yesterday, writing that he understands Cunningham’s constitutional right to invoke the Fifth, but the discussion cannot end there.
“If Cunningham is innocent of any wrongdoing, as stated by MacEachern, then perhaps Cunningham should not be asserting his Fifth Amendment right and refusing to testify before Congress,” Gosar writes. “Simply put, that is not the action of an innocent person who wants to clear his name or bring transparency to the matter.”
Fast and Furious, the controversial gun-walking investigation headed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, tracked about 2,000 guns purchased by straw buyers in the United States that went to  Mexico. The operation aimed to track the weapons’ movements in order to get proof of Mexican cartel involvement.  But the operation backfired, with the ATF losing track of hundreds of weapons. Two AK-47s from the operation were recovered at the scene of a shootout between U.S. Border Patrol agents and Mexican bandits near Rio Rico, Ariz., in December 2010 in which Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry was killed.
I have no doubt that neither Holder nor Issa care much about Patrick Cunningham.
The interesting thing is what they do care about. Clearly, Holder cares about getting the whole F&F thing quieted down before the election campaign really heats up. Otherwise, he would simply capitulate and release the documents requested rather than dribble them out in late Friday squirts.
Clearly, Issa cares about learning how the entire fiasco came into being and who approved it.
Both Holder and Issa must see potential political advantage in the courses of action they pursue.
Patrick Cunningham, it is true, is caught in a very hard place. But it seems it is a place he chose to go to, or perhaps a place he got to thoughtlessly. In any case it is a place he did not depart from rapidly enough.
The history of Fast and Furious prompts many questions:
The Bush administration had a program called Wide Receiver. It differed from Fast and Furious in several important ways. First, there were strenuous efforts to track the guns sold. Second, the Mexican government was involved and active in Wide Receiver. Third, when it proved to be ineffective it was terminated prior to 2008.
Along came the Obama administration. The same ATF field office that had to terminate Wide Receiver initiated the much looser, reckless would not be too strong a word, Fast and Furious. This shows the managers there had a very flat learning curve or the objective of the project was different.
In pursuing Fast and Furious, ATF agents let all kinds of scum buy guns and walk out of gun stores with them. Over the objections of the gun store owners. Over the objections of ethical ATF agents. It was known those guns would cross the border and be put in the hands of cartel members. It would be incredibly shortsighted not to realize the guns would be used to maim and kill innocents.
Recently disclosed ATF emails show that ATF and DOJ staffers were prepared to use the recovery of Fast and Furious guns on crime scenes in Mexico to argue for more gun control here. They cared not a fig for the suffering they were causing in Mexico.
Then an unforeseen circumstance arose: Brian Terry, a Border Patrolman, armed with a bean bag gun, was killed some distance inside the US border. Two guns recovered at the scene were discovered to have been part of the Fast and Furious program.
So the upshot of it is this: ATF, we must assume advised by DOJ, placed guns in the hands of known criminals who killed a US agent, to say nothing of the Mexicans victimized.
The history leads us to ask two interesting questions: What does Doug MacEachern suppose DOJ would do to an ordinary citizen who had done the same thing? And, in terms of Cunningham, what ethical obligation does an attorney have when those he advises are participating in such activities?
The Arizona Republic -AKA La Republica — AKA The Repugnant is widely known for its Liberal/Progressive prejudice. They never met a Liberal Cause or an Illegal Alien that they disliked.
And like most Liberal news outlets, when the facts don’t fit what they want to write, they just “Make stuff up”.