When the first line of defense is “Bush did it, too,” you can rest assured that there is no second line of defense. And on allegations that the Justice Department intervened to prevent the indictment of various Islamist figures and organizations, the Obama administration’s response appears to be: Bush did it, too.
According to reporting at Pajamas Media by Patrick Poole, who has tracked the Muslim Brotherhood for years, the DOJ intervention came in connection with the Holy Land Foundation case, in which federal prosecutors in Dallas proved that the Brotherhood bankrolled its Palestinian branch, the terrorist organization Hamas, during the deadly intifada against Israel. The linchpin of the Brotherhood scheme was the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), an ostensible Islamic charity through which tens of millions of dollars were funneled to jihadists overseas.
Implicated in this enterprise were various Islamist organizations in the United States that the Brotherhood identified as its partners. Several of these, including CAIR (the Council on American Islamic Relations), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), were designated by prosecutors as “unindicted coconspirators.” When the organizations predictably protested this description, federal courts rebuffed them, finding that there was ample evidence of their complicity.
The five indicted HLF defendants were convicted in 2008. According to Poole, the U.S. attorney in Dallas hoped to do a second round of prosecutions targeting the unindicted coconspirators. They were thwarted, however, by Obama political appointees at Main Justice. According to an unidentified Justice Department official who is one of Poole’s sources, this decision to quash indictments (including one against a top CAIR official) was made not for lack of evidence but due to political considerations: specifically, to promote “outreach” to Muslims (an Obama-administration priority) and to avoid embarrassing the government — which stood to be vilified if those with whom they had cultivated relationships were shown to have supported terrorists.
The story has begun to attract attention on Capitol Hill. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has already fired off a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, demanding an explanation. Not surprisingly, the Obama administration is fighting back. Its tack, however, does not appear to be denial of the allegations (it has, in fact, been stonewalling efforts by Poole and Pajamas to discover the paper trail). Instead, the response is: Bush did it, too.
Sure enough, in Politico on Tuesday, Josh Gerstein reported that in 2004 — on the front end of the HLF case, years before it was tried — the Dallas prosecutors wanted to include CAIR and some of the relevant Islamist organizations and their members in the indictment. Bush Justice Department officials, however, are said by Gerstein’s source (who is unidentified but described as “knowledgeable”) to have put the kibosh on the plan. From this fact, Obama apologists claim that there was precedent to guide Mr. Holder’s minions in declining prosecution six years later, and that criticism of them for having done so is a partisan political attack.
That’s not going to cut it.
To begin with, there is nothing partisan about the claim that the Obama Justice Department made a political decision in declining to prosecute. “Political” in this context simply means that the Justice Department made a decision based on considerations extraneous to the law and facts of the case — such as service to an agenda of cultivating Islamist organizations.
Administrations of both parties, going back to the Clinton era, have been guilty at times of elevating Islamic outreach over prudent national security. Critics of the Obama administration’s practice in this regard were also among the loudest critics of the Bush administration’s outreach efforts. That includes me. Though generally supportive of Bush counterterrorism policies, Gerstein fairly describes my National Review columns and my books (Willful Blindness and The Grand Jihad) as “withering” when it comes to Muslim outreach, regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats were reaching out.
But partisanship aside, there are several reasons the Obama administration’s solicitude toward Islamists is even more alarming than prior episodes, inexcusable though they were.
Let’s not even mention total bipartizanship when it comes to screw Israel and the Jews.
I start from far away… From the silence about the Shoah: the US had copies of the blueprints of Birkenau and Treblinka since 1942…see: “The Abandonment of the Jews” by David Wyman…. To letting Nazis in the US after W.W.II (Nixon was the highest official in charge) see – AMONG OTHERS – “The Secret War Against the Jews” by John Loftus… To executing the Rosembergs (both Jewish, no other soviet spy was ever executed!)… To intervening militarily against Israel in 1956… To supplying intelligence to Israel’s enemies in 1967 … To “let the Israelis bleed” in 1973 (again Nixon) …. To the POllard case (ONLY spy to serve more than 5 years IN SPITE of spying for a friendly country: but he is Jewish!)… To Stopping Israel in Lebanon in 1977, 1982, 1985… To Bush Sr. attacking Israel during the first Intifadah 1987-1991… To denying ONLY ISRAEL the FF Codes during the I Gulf War preempting an Israeli response to Saddam’s missiles attacks on Israel… etc. until our days…
Oh? I think it will — as long as Obama stays in power, and maybe longer. The two parties show an uncanny ability to cooperate, when it comes to covering their mutual behinds; and they will go to any lengths to do it. Remember Waco, where what could have been the simple arrest of David Koresh on suspicion of altering weapons without the proper license turned into a prolonged military siege of an American community. All the men involved were Bush appointees. When Janet Reno was having trouble getting approved as Clinton’s attorney general, the two parties apparently struck a deal: Janet OK’d the final assault, in exchange for exonerating the Bush-whackers (and possibly in exchange for the loss of Federal agents who knew too much about Clinton’s Arkansas shenanigans). The result of that final assault:
Remember that none of the victims had been charged with any crime. Where was Judge Goldstone when THAT happened? Or the ACLU? Or ANYONE, Right or Left? Yes, Obama can get away with anything, even murder. It’s been done. Bush did it, and Clinton as well.