While outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder continues to fend off responsibility for the law enforcement snafu known as Operation Fast and Furious, documents obtained through a judge's order reveal that not only did Holder know about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), but he discussed it via email with his physician spouse, Sharon Malone, however President Barack Obama is granting those emails to be withheld based on an "executive privilege" claim.

While most media organizations are quick to give President Barack Obama, Holder and others the "benefit of the doubt," in Holder's wife's case they actually turned a blind eye to corruption that included alleged confict-of-interest. For example, Dr. Malone is no stranger to controversy: While Holder had been blasted for his failure to investigate alleged crimes involving abortion clinics, his wife, Sharon, and his sister-in-law co-owned an abortion clinic run by an abortion physician, Tyrone Cecile Malloy, who was indicted by a Georgia grand jury on charges of Medicaid fraud after Holder's office failed to prosecute the alleged fraud.

The Fast and Furious documents, according to the prolific government watchdog group Judicial Watch, include the emails between the attorney general and his wife regarding a White House statement on the "gun walking" scandal that the White House wanted kept secret.

On July 18, 2014, U.S. District Court Judge John Bates ordered the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to produce, a Vaughn Index of withheld documents regarding Fast and Furious which the DOJ grudgingly released on October 22. When the DOJ asked the court to delay the release day until later in November -- a ploy to avoid their release before the mid-term elections -- Judge Bates denied the obviously politically-motivated request to delay the release until after the Nov. 4, 2014, elections.

In a Vaughn Index, the government must list each withheld document, state the statutory exemption claimed for it and explain how the disclosure of each document would damage the governmental interests asserted by the exemption. Malone is not a government employee or a member of the Obama White House, and so the executive privilege claim rings hollow with many legal scholars.

The index provided under Judge Bates'order shows just how far the administration went, and will continue to go, to protect its actions in Fast and Furious scandal, especially since Attorney General Holder and the Obama White House said they were unaware of ATF "gun-walking" activity that cost the lives of a U.S. Border Patrol Agent, Brian Terry, and Jaime Zapata, a special agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

There are at least 20 emails [and] other communications, but principally emails between Holder and his spouse, Dr. Sharon Malone, and "between Holder and his mother [who is] now deceased," being withheld under an extraordinary claim of executive privilege as well as a dubious claim of deliberative process privilege under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), according Judicial Watch's top investigator, Chris Farrell.