Attorney General Says Requiring DOJ to Comply with FOIA Law ‘Too Risky’

Semi-News/Semi-Satire ^ | 18 Jan 2013 | John Semmens

Attorney General Eric Holder is asking a federal court to absolve the Department of Justice (DOJ) from complying with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) because “not to do so would inflict irreparable harm.” The DOJ action came in response to a suit filed by Judicial Watch. The suit is aimed at obtaining public information on DOJ’s “fast and furious” scheme to supply guns to Mexican gangsters.
“There is no need for the people at Judicial Watch or, for that matter, anyone to know the details of this now defunct federal undertaking,” Holder insisted. “My Department has taken the necessary corrective actions. This belated attempt to poke around into government business is both unnecessary and destructive.”
While acknowledging that the FOIA mandates the requested information be released, the Attorney General asserted that “a higher law argues against blind obedience to a statute originally aimed at the misdeeds of a prior Administration. All we are asking is that the nation’s broader interests take precedence over a mere observance of formalistic rules.”
Holder further suggested that “something along the lines of the 75-year sealing of the records on the JFK assassination imposed by the Warren Commission might be the appropriate model for how we should handle this. The American people’s faith in their government must not be allowed to be undermined by what, at this point, can only be viewed as an effort to satisfy ‘academic curiosity.’”
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton described Holder’s stance as “beyond ironic. At the same time that the Obama Administration is demanding unprecedented access to all sorts of information about private citizens who are not charged with any crimes, we see the Attorney General contending that information relevant to actual crimes committed during its ill-conceived gun-running ‘sting’ operation be swept under the rug. His position is stunning in its ethical, moral, and legal incoherence.”