Brian Terry family sues officials over Fast and Furious
[Politico.com]
PHOENIX — The family of a slain Border Patrol agent has sued federal officials over the botched “Fast and Furious” gun operation.
Agent Brian Terry was mortally wounded on Dec. 14, 2010, in a firefight north of the Arizona-Mexico border between border agents and five men who had sneaked into the country to rob marijuana smugglers.
Two assault rifles acquired by a straw buyer for the gun smuggling ring targeted in the “Fast and Furious” operation were found in the aftermath of the shootout near Nogales.
Federal authorities conducting “Fast and Furious” have faced tough criticism for allowing suspected straw gun buyers for the ring to walk away from gun shops in Arizona with weapons, rather than arrest them and seize weapons.
The investigation was launched in 2009 to catch trafficking kingpins, but agents lost track of about 1,400 of the more than 2,000 weapons involved.
(more…)
Obama Contributor, Who Helped Enact Assault-Weapons Ban, Ran ‘Fast and Furious’
[CNSNews.com]
Former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke (AP Photo)(CNSNews.com) – Dennis K. Burke, who as a lawyer for the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1990s was a key player behind the enactment of the 1994 assault-weapons ban, and who then went on to become Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano’s chief of staff, and a contributor to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential primary campaign, and then a member of Obama’s transition team focusing on border-enforcement issues, ended up in the Obama administration as the U.S. attorney in Arizona responsible for overseeing Operation Fast and Furious.
When Obama nominated Burke to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, Burke told the Arizona Capitol Times he believed he understood what the president and his attorney general wanted him to do.
“There’s clearly been direction provided already by President Obama and Attorney General Holder as to what they want to be doing, and this is an office that is at the center of the issues of border enforcement,” said Burke.
Rush: Obama created crimes with gunrunning
[WND.com EXCLUSIVE]
June 20, 2012
‘It was liberalism on parade. It’s who these people are’
Radio giant Rush Limbaugh is coming down hard on the Obama administration’s “Fast and Furious” operation today, calling it “liberalism on parade” in a misguided attempt to promote stricter gun control in America.
“The whole point of Fast and Furious was to create mayhem in Mexico among drug cartels with American-made weapons easily procured so that you and I would stand up in outrage and demand tighter gun laws,” Limbaugh said.
“It was deceitful. It was sneaky. It was going against the will of the American people. It was liberalism on parade. It’s who these people are. They want tighter gun laws.”
The White House today tried to undercut a congressional investigation of the scandal in which the Department of Justice allowed guns to be sold and delivered to Mexican drug cartels by announcing tens of thousands of documents were covered by executive privilege.
This afternoon, a House panel voted to place Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for his failure to comply with a subpoena for the documents, defying Obama’s assertion of executive privilege.
Boehner Is Stalling Holder Contempt Citation On Fast And Furious
[ImpeachObamaCampaign.com]
If Darrell Issa has any thoughts of the full House voting on his Oversight Committee’s citation of contempt against Eric Holder, he will first have to clear the idea with the Attorney General’s staunchest allies and political defenders—Republican Speaker John Boehner, Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Republican Majority Whip, Kevin McCarthy.
Upon the Speaker’s office being provided a draft of the citation last week, a spokesman for the Republican leadership said “While there are very legitimate arguments to be made in favor of such an action, no decision has been made to move forward with one by the Speaker or by House Republican leaders.” (1)
But now it appears these stalwart souls have finally made that decision. They will “…slow [Issa’s] drive to hold the attorney general in contempt over the controversial Fast and Furious program…” for a period of “a month or even longer…” Apparently a year’s worth of testimony and documentation linking Obama Regime operatives to hundreds of deaths and the walking of some 2000 weapons across the Mexican border just haven’t been sufficient to convince Speaker Boehner that something is amiss. (2)
Republican leaders “…still don’t think the case is ‘rock solid…’ ” said an aide to Representative Issa. Of course, the fact that Attorney General Holder has refused to honor subpoenas demanding he turn over an estimated 8000 pages of Fast and Furious documentation might have something to do with Mr. Boehner’s feelings of uncertainty about adequate proof. (2)
Issa, Chaffetz confirm contempt plans for Holder over Fast and Furious
[FoxNews.com]
Published April 27, 2012; Posted April 28, 2012
House GOP leaders said Friday they are pursuing a plan to hold Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and the Justice Department in contempt for “stonewalling” them over information regarding the administration’s failed Fast and Furious gun-tracking program.
GOP Rep. Darrell Issa confirmed to Fox News that House Speaker John Boehner gave him and others on his House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform the authority to drafted a contempt of Congress resolution.
“We have a few other options (but) to a great extent we’ve been stonewalled by the Justice Department,” said Issa, R-Calif.
The news of the document and the extended meeting in Boehner’s office was reported first by The Los Angeles Times.
“We have issued a subpoena,” Utah GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a member of the oversight committee, said earlier on Fox News. “We have bent over backwards to be patient and take time. (Holder) is leading us down a path where we have no other choice.”
Holder: No cover-up in ‘Fast and Furious,’ no effort to hide details of the operation
[FoxNews.com]
Published February 02, 2012
AP – Feb. 2: Attorney General Eric Holder testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing entitled, “Fast & Furious: Management Failures at the Department of Justice.”
Attorney General Eric Holder vigorously denied a “cover-up” by the Justice Department over “Operation Fast and Furious,” telling a House panel investigating the botched gun-running program that he has nothing to hide and suggesting the probe is a “political” effort to embarrass the administration.
“There’s no attempt at any kind of cover-up,” Holder told lawmakers well into a hearing about whether he had been forthright in responding to requests of the House Oversight and Government Relations Committee led by Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif.
“We’re not going to be hiding behind any kind of privileges or anything,” he said.
The hearing came after Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, his Senate partner in the probe, asserted that top Justice officials are covering up events surrounding the flawed gun-smuggling probe.
Holder Suggests ‘Fast and Furious’ Guns Will Be Used in Crimes for ‘Years to Come’
[FoxNews.com]
Published December 08, 2011 (CWNews.com Post: December 14, 2011)
WASHINGTON – Attorney General Eric Holder suggested Thursday that weapons lost during the course of the failed “Fast and Furious” gunrunning operation will continue to show up at crime scenes in the U.S. and Mexico “for years to come.”Holder, in testimony on Capitol Hill that comes as the congressional investigation into the program expands, decried the “gun-walking” tactic used in the operation as “inexcusable” and “wholly unacceptable.” But a day after an influential senator called for the resignation of one of Holder’s top deputies over the scandal, Holder denied department leaders played any role in the crafting of “Fast and Furious.”
He continued to assert that top Justice officials were not told about the “inappropriate tactics” until they were made public.
Still, the top law enforcement official in the country conceded that, as a result of “Fast and Furious,” guns lost by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives remain in the hands of criminals.
GOP: Impeach Holder If He Doesn’t Come Clean on Arms-Trafficking ‘Mess’
[Newsmax.com]
Thursday, 08 Dec 2011 05:45 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican lawmakers told Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday to fire some Justice Department subordinates over the flawed arms-trafficking investigation called Operation Fast and Furious.At a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin said impeachment is an option if Holder does not “clean up this mess” quickly.
Sensenbrenner and other Republicans hold the attorney general responsible for the operation, in which federal agents failed to track illicitly purchased weapons that were later recovered in Mexico and the U.S., many of them at crime scenes.
House Republicans Request Special Counsel to Probe Holder on ‘Fast and Furious’
[FoxNews.com]
Published October 04, 2011
EXCLUSIVE: House Republicans are calling for a special counsel to determine whether Attorney General Eric Holder perjured himself during his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious, Fox News has learned.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, was sending a letter to President Obama on Tuesday arguing that Holder cannot investigate himself, and requesting the president instruct the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel.
The question is whether Holder committed perjury during a Judiciary Committee hearing on May 3. At the time, Holder indicated he was not familiar with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program known as Fast and Furious until about April 2011.
“I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks,” Holder testified.
Project Gunrunner was funded by … the stimulus [Corrupt Leadership]
HotAir.com
posted at 9:30 pm on July 7, 2011 by Allahpundit
I really did think it was too bad to check, despite posts about it at PJM, Weasel Zippers, and Free Republic. But I checked. You’ll find complete PDF and text versions of the final stimulus bill right here. Scroll down to page 16 (of 407!) in the PDF version and behold:
For an additional amount for ‘‘State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance’’, $40,000,000, for competitive grants to provide assistance and equipment to local law enforcement along the Southern border and in High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas to combat criminal narcotics activity stemming from the Southern border, of which $10,000,000 shall be transferred to ‘‘Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Salaries and Expenses’’ for the ATF Project Gunrunner.
And to think, you guys say the stimulus didn’t produce anything. It produced guns for Mexican drug cartels, didn’t it? Says Ben Domenech, in a stroke of perfect black humor: “Shovel ready.”
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