Eric Holder Under Fire ... Again
by Troy Anderson
November 8, 2012
Already facing calls for a congressional investigation into his ties to Georgia’s most notorious abortion doctor, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. may be headed for more trouble.
Documents obtained by Watchdog.org reveal that Holder failed to disclose his wife’s ownership of the building where the doctor operated.
The attorney general’s financial disclosure reports for 2008 through 2011 show Holder neglected to report his wife’s co-ownership, through a family trust, of the building located in the Atlanta suburb of College Park.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch in Washington, D.C., said he was “surprised there is this trust out there and (Holder) hasn’t reported it.”
“It looks to me like the sort of thing that should be disclosed. If he and his spouse are gaining income off this trust, generally that would be subject to disclosure,” Fitton said. “I mean, if you have an ownership interest, you get the income. You may not be making the day-to-day decisions about the investments, but you are certainly benefiting from them.”
Holder did not respond to several requests for comment.
Dana Cody, an attorney and the president and executive director of Life Legal Defense Foundation, a pro-life legal defense organization in Napa, Calif., agreed that Holder should have “disclosed any financial interest he had in the abortion industry.”
Under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, high-level federal officials are required to “disclose publicly their personal financial interests to ensure confidence in the integrity of the federal government by demonstrating that they are able to carry out their duties without compromising the public trust.”
The law further requires disclosure of the “holdings of and income from the holdings of any trust, estate, investment fund or other financial arrangement from which income is received by, or with respect to which a beneficial interest in principal or income is held by, the filer, his spouse, or dependent child.”
Those found violating the law can face penalties ranging from criminal and civil fines to imprisonment, according to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. This includes fines of up to $50,000 and a maximum of a year imprisonment, if the non-disclosure was done willfully, according to the Office of Government Ethics.
Like any area of the law, this one is subject to interpretation, and some experts said it was possible to argue that the family trust is constructed in a way that allows Holder to deny any interest. Contacted by Watchdog.org in October, Holder’s sister-in-law, a co-manager of the trust with Holder’s wife, was apparently relying on the trust when she claimed she and her sister did not “technically” own the building.
That explanation didn’t fly with Cody and others, however.
“Assuming for the sake of argument that he was not required to do so, or wasn’t aware he was required to do so, to avoid an appearance of any wrongdoing, he should have been forthcoming and disclosed the interests his wife holds in the building where (the doctor) operated an abortion clinic,” Cody said.
Michael Norton, the former U.S. attorney in the District of Colorado and senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, also agreed Holder should have disclosed the property in his financial disclosure reports.
“It was not proper for him to not disclose his interests in the building co-owned by his wife,” Norton said. “It appears to me to be an conflict of interest that should have been disclosed and, in all candor, requires Mr. Holder to recuse himself from matters of this nature.”
Read more: http://goo.gl/J5vWS
NEWSBUSTED
by Tim Graham
November 9, 2012
Perhaps because he loves Barack Obama so deeply, NBC anchor Brian Williams spent Election Night in a snit over some odd tweets by Donald Trump somehow denying America is a democracy. He turned to Steve Schmidt -- ahem, the strategic genius who lost the last presidential campaign to Obama -- to explain why Rush Limbaugh and Trump need to be shut down (video and transcript below):
The Huffington Post noticed Williams grew agitated over Trump on the air: “Donald Trump, who has driven well past the last exit to relevance and peered into something closer to irresponsible here, is tweeting tonight.”
Earth to Williams: It's NBC that's making Trump a household name, and it's the "mainstream media" that are fascinated by everything he says because of their hatred of "birther" slurs. He might be irrelevant if you could ignore him, but you'd rather try and define him INTO the conservative firmament.
Read more: http://goo.gl/bcc2p
THE DAILY CALLER
Boehner: ‘We don’t have a tea party caucus to speak of in the House’
by Alexis Levinson
November 9, 2012
There is no tea party caucus independent of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives, Speaker of the House John Boehner said Thursday in an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer.
“We’ve got members from all different types — all walks of life, if you will,” Boehner said.
“But do they come back changed by this election?” Sawyer asked.
“Well, listen, I think this has been the most misreported story of my two years’ tenure,” Boehner replied. “We don’t have a tea party caucus to speak of in the House. All of us who were elected in 2010 were supported by the tea party.”
“These are ordinary Americans who’ve taken a more active role in our government. They want solutions. But we’ve all come a long way over the past two years. We all understand each other a lot better,” Boehner added.
“So you don’t foresee any problem as you head into this negotiation?” Sawyer asked, according to a transcript provided by Boehner’s office.
“There’re gonna be problems,” Boehner replied, according to the transcript. “There will be problems — dealin’ with what the president’ll want. Problems dealin’ with what my members want. Take it one day at a time, and do your best.”
Only the first two questions and answers from the interview were posted online by ABC at publication time.
The Tea Party Caucus, which was started by Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann in 2010, currently has 55 members. Boehner apparently was not referring to that group in the interview.
Democrats immediately jumped on Boehner’s comment, saying that the interview was an attempt by the speaker “to disavow the tea party.”
“No matter how hard Speaker Boehner tries to cover it up, voters know that the House Republican Caucus and the tea party are the exact same thing, and that’s why they fired tea party incumbents in this week’s election,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee communications director Jesse Ferguson said in a statement.
“The American people sent 16 tea party Republican incumbents packing on election night, and now Speaker Boehner is trying to hide his tea party agenda before it starts costing Republicans even more seats,” Ferguson added. “Speaker Boehner pledged to actually gain seats in the 2012 elections, so maybe falling so short of his goal has just made it harder to remember reality.”
Boehner’s communications director, Kevin Smith, denied Ferguson’s claims.
“[Boehner] was simply referring to the inaccurate perception in the press that members who were supported by the tea party in 2010 have somehow been a problem,” Smith said.
Read more: http://goo.gl/t8pXl
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| Hey GOP establishment! ...when you join in with your liberal big-government comrades in D.C. and repeat their LIES about us, YOU are providing PROOF we have no place in the GOP. LONG LIVE THE TEA PARTY! |
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