Homeland Security Show | Episode 13

• In border news, an ex-U.S. agent who helped cartels gets 30 months in prison for accessing police databases and passing on sensitive information to family members with ties to Mexican drug cartels. Jovana Deas was accused of illegally obtaining and disseminating classified government documents while working as a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) special agent in Nogales, Ariz., a city on the border with Mexico. Prosecutors said Deas, who resigned from ICE last year, passed information pulled from restricted crime and immigration databases to her former brother-in-law, Miguel Angel Mendoza Estrada, a Mexican cartel associate with ties to drug traffickers in Brazil.

• In Congressional “Fast & Furious” news, the assertion of Executive Privilege by President Obama, and the refusal of the Justice Department to bring federal charges against their own Attorney General Eric Holder, despite a criminal and civil contempt order being passed in the House of Representatives, represents a gross usurpation of necessary Congressional oversight in a matter that involved national security, crime, hundreds of deaths in Mexico and at least one federal agent’s death in the United States. Deputy Attorney General James Cole said “We will not prosecute an executive branch official under the contempt of Congress statute for withholding subpoenaed documents pursuant to a presidential assertion of executive privilege.” What Deputy AG Cole did not acknowledge was (1) his conflict of interest in making the decision; and (2) that the contempt holding against Holder was dramatically different in that it involved violent crimes and national security. Prior contempt holdings against major political appointees, including prior Attorney Generals in trouble for things like campaign financing or the appointment of judges.