A Bit More on Eric Holder
In the period before armed agents seized the child, the Justice Department had been leaking its intention to avoid any sort of armed intervention. It would all be done quietly, they suggested. When top Department officials were asked about it, they said nothing to change that impression. About two weeks before the raid, Tim Russert asked Holder, "You wouldn't send a SWAT team in the dark of night to kidnap the child, in effect?" Holder answered, "No, we don't expect anything like that to happen." Then the Department did precisely that. The day after the seizure, Holder appeared again with Russert, who asked, "Why such a dramatic change in position?" "I'm not sure I'd call it a dramatic change," Holder answered. "We waited 'til five in the morning, just before dawn."
It's one thing to not want to tip your hand about what you're planning. It's something else to be retroactively smug about sending armed agents into a private home to pry a kid out his nonviolent relatives' arms at gunpoint.
Eric Holder, the deputy attorney general, appeared on Fox News a few hours after the raid that morning. Judge Andrew Napolitano accused the Justice Department of taking the child at gunpoint. Mr. Holder denied the charge. What he didn't realize was that he was appearing on a split screen, the other half showing the Alan Diaz photo. "Not taken at gunpoint?" an incredulous Napolitano shot back. "Have you seen the photograph?"
He probably hadn't. That would explain why he thought he could get away with lying about how Gonzalez was seized.
Hat tip for both stories to Rob Port.
