Eric Holder: Hundreds of Terrorists Imprisoned by Federal Courts: Guess Not!

It all depends on what the meaning of "Terrorist" is. Remember Attorney General Eric Holder claiming the Feds had imprisoned "hundreds" of terrorists through civilian court trials? Apparently not. The press release came late on Friday as everyone exited Washington, D.C. for Easter break (or "time off" for non-believers).

Eric Holder

First, this summation from Andy McCarthy demonstrating just how deep the perversion and deceit in the Department of Justice goes:

The problem is not simply that Justice's numbers are bogus, just like Dana Perino, Bill Burck, I, and others said they were. It is that Justice's purpose is fraudulent.

Andy McCarthy at NRO's The Corner: (emphasis mine)

Finally today, after months of delay, DOJ officials released what they claim is the back-up for Attorney General Holder's oft-repeated and outlandish claim that there are "hundreds" of convicted "terrorists" incarcerated in federal prisons, which "fact" supposedly shows that civilian justice processes are our best method of trying, convicting and securely detaining terrorists.

The Friday data dump is a joke. No wonder they waited til everyone was headed out of town to dump it.

An honest disclosure would have said, "OK, you got us. There are not hundreds of convicted terrorists in custody. That was an exaggeration. The critics were right when they said we were rigging the numbers and inflating our count with hundreds of cases that did not involve terrorism convictions — as well as other cases which, while colorably related to terrorism, are not in the same league as cases involving alien enemy combatants like the 9/11 plotters." 

But that's not what Justice did. Instead, it leaked its disclosure to friendly media (see, e.g., here) which dutifully spun the story to say Justice was "calling the bluff" of its critics. Plainly, Holder & Co. are trying to shape the narrative before anyone actually reads the underlying data. (After watching the media's shoddy coverage last week of the CBO report on Obamacare, who could blame them for figuring they'd get away with it?)

But the claim that there are 403 terrorists in custody is absurd. DOJ arrives at this figure by counting what it describes as two categories of case. The first involves real terrorism charges. Sounds fair enough, but what types of "terrorism charges" are they counting? Well they include, for example, convictions under statutes barring "Animal Enterprise Terrorism," "Narco-terrorism," "crimes against internationally protected persons" (which can be terrorism-related but are not necessarily), hostage-taking (ditto), and offenses like harboring terrorists and material support to terrorism (which are surely terrorism-related, and involve assistance provided to terrorists, but are charges generally brought against facilitators, not actual terrorists).

Read the entire article at The Corner (linked above). More at Hot Air.

Linked by Storm'n Norm'n - Thank you Norm!