The Arizona State Bar is notorious for failing to hold attorneys responsible for their actions, and the Bar’s reprimand of former Obama Administration political appointee Dennis Burke, who served as the U.S. Attorney for Arizona during Operation Fast and Furious is perhaps the most egregious example say many, including House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa.
The Bar reached a settlement with Burke in which he will accept a reprimand and pay $1,200 to cover investigative costs. The agreement must be approved by Arizona Presiding Disciplinary Judge William O’Neil. According to the Arizona Republic, the Bar declined to release records from the ethics case other than the disciplinary agreement.
Burke’s actions to save himself harmed ATF whistleblower John Dodson, an Arizona agent for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who first exposed the failed gun running scheme. He said Burke sought to damage his credibility and thwart a congressional probe by unauthorized leaks, according to the Arizona Republic.
“Dennis Burke’s disciplinary agreement with the Arizona State Bar makes clear his belief that Eric Holder’s Justice Department was more interested in politically protecting itself than giving Congress full information about what happened in Operation Fast and Furious. Former ATF Director Kenneth Melson offered Congress a similar perspective.
“Burke’s acknowledgement of wrongdoing to an Arizona court underscores the importance of ongoing federal court litigation the House Oversight Committee is pursuing as a result of the bipartisan 2012 vote to hold U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for refusing to produce subpoenaed documents. These documents will shed light on the nature of the Department’s false denials of improper conduct and its response to Congress, including misconduct of which Dennis Burke was aware, that Attorney General Holder refused to discuss with Congress.”
“While Dennis Burke’s discipline before the State Bar is undoubtedly deserved, I’m deeply troubled to see him describe and have the State Bar apparently accept at face value, the idea that his effort to retaliate against a Fast and Furious whistleblower was intended as an act of ‘transparency.’ His actions to selectively leak a single document supporting a misleading narrative, though a common tactic in the Obama Administration, was a cowardly and self-serving action intended to smear a whistleblower.”
In August 2011, Dennis Burke, in a transcribed interview with Congressional investigators, made the following statement acknowledging personal fault in the reckless operation:
• I take responsibility. I’m not going to say mistakes were made. I’m going to say we made mistakes. . . . So when our office makes mistakes, I need to take responsibility, and this is a case, as reflected by the work of this investigation, it should not have been done the way it was done, and I want to take responsibility for that, and I’m not falling on a sword or trying to cover for anyone else.
• Just as one example, and I assume we will get this in the questioning, in this case in particular, one of the defendants, Patino, ended up a straw purchaser of over 700 weapons. That’s indefensible. That is not something that I’m going to defend. I think those are reflections of how this investigation could have been handled differently and how our prosecution could have been handled differently, and I use that as just one example, but there are others
• I take fault also in the sense that, you know, at numerous times the SAC for ATF would indicate to me, would give me kind of updates on activity of gun trafficking from the Southwest to Mexico, either directly ‑‑ either in some kind of anecdote that he was passing information on to me or some reference in the anecdote or in the email to Fast and Furious, and in retrospect I should have spent more time on that.
• And realizing, you know, the size of the case, whether we had enough people on it or, like, as I think we discussed in the last one, I think we discussed it at the last one or at least mentioned it, that on a wire case of this magnitude, if ‑‑ there are times when you can be taking people down during the case as opposed to waiting until the end. So I think I learned some supervising skills that were lacking during that case.
In another move Issa and Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) questioned Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) Director B. Todd Jones about the apparent lack of disciplinary actions taken against key players in the Operation Fast and Furious scandal, 19 months after the Inspector General found these individuals culpable.
“While several ATF officials chose to retire or leave ATF in the wake of Fast and Furious rather than face discipline, it is our understanding that ATF continues to employ three key players from Fast and Furious: Case Agent Hope MacAllister, Group Supervisor David Voth, and Special Agent in Charge William Newell,” wrote Issa and Grassley.
“It is inexcusable that, 19 months after these findings became public, ATF has provided Congress with no information about whether, or to what extent, these employees have been held accountable. The repeated faulty judgment of MacAllister, Voth, and Newell severely jeopardized public safety during Fast and Furious, and ATF’s failure to account for what disciplinary action, if any, has been taken is an affront to the family of Brian Terry.”
The lawmakers continued: “Although you suggested during your confirmation process that [former Deputy Assistant Director (DAD) for Field Operations William] McMahon had been terminated prior to reaching his early retirement date, it is far from clear that any personnel action in his case had anything to do with his involvement in Fast and Furious. As a result of our letter to you, the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General initiated an investigation and recently found that McMahon took approximately one month of sick leave at the same time ATF approved his outside employment at J.P. Morgan. ATF approved both the sick leave and the outside employment, despite the obvious conflict between the two, suggesting that the sick leave may have been fraudulent. However, the narrative in the OIG report stopped short of describing any personnel action that may have been taken or explaining the basis for any such action.”