Tea Party Congressman: Obama Administration Accessory To Murder

A Tea Party Congressman, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), has accused cabinet officials and possibly President Obama himself of possible accessory to murder charges for the handling of Operation Fast And Furious, a gun program that went awry.

“We’re talking about consequences of criminal activity, where we actually allowed guns to walk into the hands of criminals, where our livelihoods are at risk,” Gosar said in a phone interview with The Daily Caller, failed political pundit Tucker Carlson’s attempt to gain credibility. “When you facilitate that and a murder or a felony occurs, you’re called an accessory. That means that there’s criminal activity.”

“This should have been a Cabinet [issue], and I keep saying it all along,” Gosar continued. “He [Holder] points to Homeland Security Secretary [Janet] Napolitano in this and I would have no doubts — I’m a common sense person — that this should have also involved the secretary of state, which means everybody knew — and we’re starting to see that in the document dump from the White House.”

Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly, in a column yesterday titled, “And now we get to ‘murder’ allegations,” says, “the fact that a far-right member of Congress is using words like “murder” and “accessory” in the context of administration officials suggests it really is the mid-90s all over again. It’s only a matter of time, I suppose, before prominent Republican officials are shooting melons in their backyard and sending the White House subpoenas about the president’s pet.”

“It was around this time in the Clinton presidency when unhinged Republican lawmakers started wondering whether the then-president was guilty of murder, or at least accessory to murder” Benen writes. “Right on cue, GOP lawmakers are back to their old tricks.”

I am curious about something, though. It turns out that House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) was also briefed on the briefed on the “Fast and Furious” plan last year, never raised any objections, and later pretended to be surprised that the program even existed. Under Gosar’s reasoning, would Issa be an accessory, too?

For that matter, it turns out the Bush administration had a “Fast and Furious” program of its own. Is Gosar, or Issa for that matter, equally interested in this, too? Or are ridiculous allegations about accessory to murder limited to Democrats?

“This” points to a column from earlier this month, “Will Rep. Issa Ask What Former AG Gonzales Knew About Bush-Era Gunwalking?,” at Media Matters’ Political Correction.

Let’s add to that Bush and Cheney and the Iraq war, for starters. Gosar might want to take a look at his own party first, before impugning the Office of the President.

Gosar, who goes by “Dr. Gosar,” was endorsed in 2010 by Mitt Romney,  Sarah Palin and the infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

All proof, I suppose, that the Tea Party has indeed “gone off the rails” and “is not playing with a full deck.”