Operation ‘Fast and Furious’ has taken a new turn.

Late Friday night, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released documents that show Attorney General Eric Holder was alerted of border patrol agent Brian Terry’s death the day it occurred- contradicting Holder’s statements when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee on May 3, 2011. At the time, Holder said he was informed of Terry’s murder only “a few weeks” before the hearing.

Matthew Boyle at the Daily Caller has the story:

“An email from one official, whose name has been redacted from the document, to now-former Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke reads: “On December 14, 2010, a BORTAC agent working in the Nogales, AZ AOR was shot. The agent was conducting Border Patrol operations 18 miles north of the international boundary when he encountered [redacted word] unidentified subjects. Shots were exchanged resulting in the agent being shot. At this time, the agent is being transported to an area where he can be air lifted to an emergency medical center.”

That email was sent at 2:31 a.m. on the day Terry was shot. One hour later, a follow-up email read: “Our agent has passed away.”

Burke forwarded those two emails to Holder’s then-deputy chief of staff Monty Wilkinson later that morning, adding that the incident was “not good” because it happened “18 miles w/in” the border.

Wilkinson responded to Burke shortly thereafter and said the incident was “tragic.” “I’ve alerted the AG [Holder], the Acting DAG, Lisa, etc.”

(more…)

From CBSNews:

Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation “Fast and Furious” to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.

In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the “big fish.” But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called “gunwalking,” and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

ATF officials didn’t intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called “Demand Letter 3″. That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or “long guns.” Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.

(more…)

From The Los Angeles Times:

Torres Marrufo, also known as “the Jaguar,” has been identified by U.S. authorities as the enforcer for Sinaloa cartel chieftain Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman. The Fast and Furious weapons were found at one of Torres Marrufo’s homes April 30 when Mexican police inspected the property. It was unoccupied but “showed signs of recent activity,” they said.

The basement had been converted into a gym with a wall covered with built-in mirrors. Behind the mirrors they found a hidden room with the Fast and Furious weapons and dozens more, including an antiaircraft machine gun, a sniper rifle and a grenade launcher.

“We have seized the most important cache of weapons in the history of Ciudad Juarez,” Chihuahua state Gov. Cesar Duarte said at the time, though he did not know that many of the weapons came from the U.S. and Fast and Furious.

(more…)

From FoxNews:

House Republicans are calling for a special counsel to determine whether Attorney General 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 with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program known as Fast and Furious until about April 2011.

(more…)

From The Hill:

A series of emails written in October 2010 between Jason Weinstein, the deputy assistant attorney general of DOJ’s criminal division, and James Trusty, the acting chief of the DOJ’s organized crime and gang section, reveals a fluid knowledge of the operation.

“It’s not going to be any big surprise that a bunch of US guns are being used in MX [Mexico], so I’m not sure how much grief we get for ‘guns walking,’ ” wrote Trusty to Weinstein. “It may be more like, ‘Finally, they’re going after people who sent guns down there … ‘ ”

(more…)

From CBSNews:

Late Friday, the White House turned over new documents in the Congressional investigation into the ATF “Fast and Furious” gunwalking scandal.

The documents show extensive communications between then-ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell – who led Fast and Furious – and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O’Reilly. Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O’Reilly are long time friends.

(more…)

Last week, Judicial Watch and its client Tiffany Hartley jacked up the heat on the Obama administration to provide some answers related to the murder of Mrs. Hartley’s husband, David, who was gunned down in September 2010, apparently at the hands of a Mexican drug cartel. Mr. and Mrs. Hartley were driving jet skis on Falcon Lake, which sits on the border between the U.S. and Mexico, when gunmen opened fire from a nearby boat striking Mr. Hartley in the head.

The Obama administration, for its part, seems to have ended its participation in the murder investigation and is now giving Mrs. Hartley the stiff arm regarding her request for information.

That’s where we come in.

On September 16, Judicial Watch filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the Department of State, Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI to obtain all government records pertaining to the September shooting, including Obama administration communications with Mexican law enforcement officials, military authorities, and other Mexican officials.

CNN’s Justice Blog had the story:

Almost a year has passed since Tiffany Hartley’s husband was shot and killed while on a personal watercraft on Falcon Lake, which sits on the border and is shared between Texas and Mexico.

Now she has sued the State Department, the Justice Department and the FBI in an attempt to get answers about what happened that day and why no one has been brought to justice in the killing of David Hartley.

It is believed that he was shot by members of the Zetas drug cartel, but no one has been arrested or even named as a suspect in his death.

With the help of Judicial Watch, an organization dedicated to investigating corruption, Tiffany Hartley filed the three Freedom of Information Act lawsuits Friday.

(more…)

From The Los Angeles Times:

In the fall of 2009, ATF agents installed a secret phone line and hidden cameras in a ceiling panel and wall at Andre Howard’s Lone Wolf gun store. They gave him one basic instruction: Sell guns to every illegal purchaser who walks through the door.

For 15 months, Howard did as he was told. To customers with phony IDs or wads of cash he normally would have turned away, he sold pistols, rifles and semiautomatics. He was assured by the ATF that they would follow the guns, and that the surveillance would lead the agents to the violent Mexican drug cartels on the Southwest border.

When Howard heard nothing about any arrests, he questioned the agents. Keep selling, they told him. So hundreds of thousands of dollars more in weapons, including .50-caliber sniper rifles, walked out of the front door of his store in a Glendale, Ariz., strip mall.

(more…)

So far, the shuffling of employees–and some might argue, the buying of their silence–has been the only reaction to the Gunwalker scandal, in which various agencies of the federal government conspired to assure the success of straw purchasers and smugglers running guns to a violent Mexican drug cartel.

In the months since the scandal was revealed, the Department of Justice (DOJ) , BATF, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Internal Revenue Service Criminal Division (IRS-CD), Department of Homeland Security, and Department of State, have conspired to stonewall and House and Senate investigations that have been launched to investigate a scandal that appears to be worse than Iran-Contra and Watergate combined.

The scandal is not complicated, and would be revealed by the answering of five simple questions that the media dare not demand answers to from this Administration.

1. Who came up with the idea of allowing guns to be purchased by straw purchasers and then “walked” across the border by smugglers?
2. Who authorized Operation Fast and Furious in the Department of Justice?
3. Who authorized Operation Fast and Furious in the Department of Homeland Security?
4. Is Operation Fast and Furious the only operation of its type, or were there similar operations in Texas, Florida, and other states as evidence suggests?
5. What, precisely, did Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and Janet Napolitano know about Operation Fast and Furious, and when did they know it?

(more…)

Over the July Fourth weekend, there was a major development in the Fast and Furious investigation when BATF head Ken Melson made a surprise July 4th appearance before Darrel Issa and Chuck Grassley’s congressional committee put together to investigate Fast and Furious.

That operation involved BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) agents allowing straw purchasers to buy over two thousand automatic weapons and then smuggle them illegally across the border to Mexican Drug cartels. The operation led to a spike in violence in Mexico, the killing in Arizona of a U.S. Border Patrol agent last December and a possible attempted cover up by the BATF and the US Department of Justice.

BATF head Melson was placed in a particularly bad light by the earlier testimony of agents, some of whom depicted him watching the illegal gun deals go down on closed circuit TV and literally rubbing his hands with glee. Melson, a temporary appointee, was set up to fall on his sword for Fast and Furious and was apparently under a great deal of pressure from the Obama Administration to ‘resign’. Instead, he resisted and said he wanted to testify before the investigative committee, but in order to do that, he needed clearance from the Department of Justice.

In a particularly revolting display of partisan horse trading and disregard for justice, the ranking Senate Democrat on the committee, Patrick Leahy made a deal with Republican Senator Chuck Grassley to allow access to certain documents and allow Melson and other witnesses to testify – in exchange for releasing holds on three Obama Administration DOJ nominees.

(more…)

From CNN:

The acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and firearms is expected to resign amid the ongoing controversy over the “Fast and Furious” operation, two senior federal law enforcement sources told CNN.

Straw buyers were allowed to illegally purchase large numbers of weapons in the operation, some of which ended up in the hands of cartels in Mexico.

Acting Director Kenneth Melson may resign in the next day or two, the sources said.

(more…)

In my previous column I wrote that Congressman Darrell Issa said the Mexican government has called Projects ‘Gun Runner’ and ‘Fast and Furious’ an “act of war”.  After being flooded with numerous media inquiries the Congressman’s office contacted me and said the actual words he used were  “an active war” -not “an act of war”- and he was referring to the Mexican war on drugs not, not Projects Gun Runner and Fast And Furious.

After listening to the audio from our interview several times I must say I find it indistinguishable.  You can listen to the You Tube below and decide for yourself.

You Tube: Darrell Issa interview

The Washington Post is reporting that the words ‘act of war’ were used in a previous interview conducted with California talk show host Rick Roberts a few weeks ago.  Either way over 2500 weapons were inexcusably allowed to walk, two Border Agents are dead, the DOJ is stonewalling Issa’s subpoena requests, and the Congressman should be applauded for his efforts to find out who made the decision behind Projects ‘Gun Runner’ and ‘Fast and Furious’.

(more…)

Recently immediately after Congressman Darrell Issa finished giving a speech from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, I caught up with him for his most recent comments on the investigation into the ATF gunwalking scandal known as Projects “Fast and Furious” and “Gun Runner.”

The California Congressman, as many of you know, is Chairman of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is investigating the DOJ’s role in the selling of assault weapons to known drug cartel members.  Below is an excerpt from the interview.

You Tube: Issa with the latest from his investigation into the ATF gunmwalking scandal.

“The good news is the dedicated men and women of the ATF and DOJ are breaking ranks and coming in as whistleblowers.  We’ve had numerous voluoluntary interviews that have given us an understanding of what went wrong and an understanding that a decision was made far above their level…”

“Two Border Patrol Agents are dead…this (1,800 weapons sold to drug traffickers) has resulted in an accumulation of hurt and killing that will go on for years…”

“…One of our objectives in the investigation is we have to put confidence back in the system on both sides of the border that U.S. law enforcement does not allow weapons to walk…President Calderone of Mexico is the most cooperative partner on the war on drugs that we have had in years and the Mexican government has called this ‘an active war’.”

(more…)

We are a selfish nation and treating our neighbor to the south horribly. It’s our fault that border violence is up.

From Fox News:

A coalition of Mexican mayors has asked the United States to stop deporting illegal immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes in the U.S. to Mexican border cities, saying the deportations are contributing to Mexican border violence.

Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes blamed U.S. deportation policy for contributing to his city’s violence, saying that of the 80,000 people deported to Juarez in the past three years, 28,000 had U.S. criminal records — including 7,000 convicted rapists and 2,000 convicted murderers.

Wait a second. This can’t be true. Everyone knows that all the illegal aliens in America are law abiding people (except for that coming into the country illegally part) who just want to do the jobs Americans won’t do. Hey, don’t we have American rapists and murderers to do these “jobs”? Maybe these guys will do it for less.

(more…)