CONGRESS RIPS OBAMA ON COVER UP OF
FAST & FURIOUS GUN RUNNING
BY ALEX NEWMAN
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Despite leaving office without facing justice, Obama and his top administration officials are still not out of the woods yet on the “Fast and Furious” scheme to arm Mexican drug cartels under the guise of conducting an “investigation.” This month, the House Oversight Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee released a damning report
blasting the former administration for the scandal and the subsequent
ham-handed attempt to cover it up, including obstruction of Congress and
shady dealings with the press and victims' families. Many key documents
are still being withheld. Unsurprisingly, the establishment media has
completely ignored the latest developments in the explosive story. But
with more facts coming out, activists and victims' families hope former
officials involved in the deadly gun-running program may still be
brought to justice for a wide range of crimes.
Operation Fast and Furious was an Obama program in which the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) helped put heavy
weapons into the hands of murderous drug cartels in Mexico. The whole
scandal exploded when a federal agent was murdered with a Fast and
Furious gun. As the story threatened to bring down key Obama officials,
the spin was put out that it was all part of a supposed “investigation”
into “drug cartels.” However, massive amounts of evidence emerged in the
subsequent months and years suggesting that it was actually a criminal operation to blame the Second Amendment for violence, with the supposed targets of the alleged “investigation” already on the FBI payroll. Indeed, top lawmakers and gun-rights activists have said the operation was intended to be exploited by Obama to push gun-control, but it blew up in the administration's face when federal agents blew the whistle.
The latest joint staff report on the scandal, released by lawmakers
on June 7, is the third in a series of congressional reports outlining
the Obama administration's plan to arm murderous drug cartels by
coercing U.S. gun dealers to sell them and using U.S. tax money to buy
them. Dubbed “Fast and Furious: Obstruction of Congress by the Department of Justice,”
the new report highlights what lawmakers said was the former
administration's oftentimes illegal stonewalling and deliberate lying in
the DOJ's efforts to cover up the crimes. It came from the top, too. Of
course, lying to Congress can itself be a crime, and Obama's attorney
general, anti-gun extremist Eric Holder, was held in criminal contempt of Congress for his lies. However, he was never put behind bars.
The new report was scathing. “In the course of that investigation,
nearly six years ago, the Justice Department wrote to Congress and
falsely denied that law enforcement officers allowed straw purchasers to
buy firearms illegally in the United States and traffic them without
being apprehended," explained the joint staff report's executive
summary. “Since that false denial, the Committees have investigated why
the Department of Justice misled Congress and failed to correct its
misrepresentation in a timely manner. Despite the Department’s refusal
to cooperate, the investigation developed with the cooperation of DOJ
whistleblowers.”
Holder himself was involved in withholding “thousands of key
documents,” the report continues. And he even asked Obama to exert
so-called “executive privilege” over “all documents related to the
Department’s responses to questions from Congress about Fast and
Furious.” Obama complied, “dishonestly” purporting to justify the
administration's refusal to comply with lawful congressional subpoenas
in order to “obstruct the investigation.” By the government's own logic,
that strongly suggests top officials had “something to hide.”
In essence, then, the highest levels of the Obama administration were
determined to prevent the American people's elected representatives
from doing their jobs — even if it meant openly flaunting federal law.
Finally, the courts stepped in, forcing officials to hand over some
of the documents. “The produced documents showed Holder was
significantly more involved in the response to Congress’s investigation
than had previously been understood,” the new report said. “Many key
documents are still being withheld, but the body of evidence available
at this point is sufficiently robust to conclude that there are
fundamental flaws in the Department’s approach to responding to
congressional requests for documents and information generally, and in
the Department’s tactics in dealing with questions about the Fast and
Furious case in particular.”
According to the newly available documents cited in the report,
Justice Department officials were “focused more on spin and obfuscation
than getting the facts right.” Calling the climate at DOJ headquarters
“highly politicized,” the report noted that the Obama Justice Department
was doing its best to limit the amount of disclosed information in its
dealings with Congress and the press. Even the family of Border Patrol
agent Brian Terry, who was murdered with a Fast and Furious gun, was
given the runaround by Obama's administration, with the DOJ apparently
viewing the family as a “public relations nuisance” more than anything
else.
Other outrages documented in the report include the DOJ's failure to
properly investigate the concerns of whistleblowers. The internal
investigations, the report said, were “deeply flawed” and “largely a
sham,” with DOJ officials accepting at face value the information they
received from the bureaucrats involved in the gun-running. Documents
obtained by Congress also revealed a lack of respect for congressional
oversight, according to the report, with lawmakers saying Obama's top
DOJ officials, including Holder, showed “disdain” for Congress and its
role. On top of that, the documents show that the DOJ's bizarre
responses and focus on spin and lies were coming down from Holder
himself, the report said. Numerous voices said Holder should be in jail.
One major focus of the latest report was the
murder of Border Patrol Agent Terry.
“More than five years after Brian’s murder, the Terry family still
wonders about key details of Operation Fast and Furious,” the joint
staff report explained. “The Justice Department’s obstruction of
Congress’s investigation contributed to the Terry family’s inability to
find answers.” Senator Chuck Grassley, who has played a key role in the
congressional investigation, testified before the House Oversight
Committee and made similar charges. “The Department of Justice and ATF
had no intention of looking for honest answers and being transparent,”
he said. “In fact, from the onset, bureaucrats employed shameless delay
tactics to obstruct the investigation.”
Another official who testified at the House hearing was ATF Special
Agent John Dodson, one of the initial whistleblowers to come forward and
expose the scandalous scheme. In his testimony before lawmakers, Dodson
said his objection to the gun-running resulted in official reprisals,
ridicule, and being put in a “state of purgatory” within the agency.
“That decision, the single act of standing up and saying, what we are
doing is wrong,... instantly took my standing from being that of an
agent of the government — to an enemy of the state,” Dodson testified.
“ATF and DOJ officials implemented an all-out campaign to silence and
discredit me. Suffice to say, the last six to seven years at ATF have
not been the best for me or my career.”
Indeed, it was thanks to Dodson that
many of the administration's lies about Fast and Furious were exposed to lawmakers and the public in the first place.
Among other lies, Dodson's revelations debunked the false “botched
investigation” narrative peddled by top officials — the notion that the
program was simply a well-intentioned plan gone awry to trace weapons
and arrest criminals. Instead, Dodson showed that there never was an
actual plan to actually catch any criminals. Even more absurd: the
supposed “criminals” being investigated “had been cultivated as
informants and were in fact assets of the FBI,” Dodson explained,
exploding the fake narrative pushed by the administration and its
propagandists in the establishment press.
In other words, the FBI was working with its “assets” to use U.S.
taxpayer dollars to help arm Mexican drug cartels with weapons bought at
American gun stores under orders from the ATF. “Take the government out
of this equation and nothing gets done,” Dodson noted. “No guns get
purchased, because there is no FBI money to pay for them; no guns get
sold, because ATF is not coercing the gun dealers to sell them; and no
guns get trafficked, because ATF is not using the guise of a ‘big case’
to allow it all to happen. And yet the Justice Department was happy to
let the farce continue, telling my ATF bosses they were doing a great
job.” And then, the resulting violence was used to demonize gun rights
and the Second Amendment.
For reasons that remain unclear, President Donald Trump's Attorney
General Jeff Sessions was not willing to testify about the issue before
the House Oversight Committee. In a letter sent to committee chair Jason
Chaffetz (R-Utah), the DOJ cited ongoing litigation in the case, as
well as “settlement discussions,” for refusing to show up or at least
send somebody. “Under these circumstances, we are not in a position to
provide additional information in response to your questions, nor to
have a Department witness testify about them at a congressional
hearing," the DOJ said in its letter. Once the litigation is over, that
may change.
While Obama and his top minions have so far escaped serious
accountability for their deadly scheming, which has contributed to
hundreds of deaths on both sides of the border, the American people
continue to demand answers. Hopefully Congress will take the probe
seriously, too. For the sake of preventing similar crimes in the future,
it is crucial that the gun running, the perjury, the criminal contempt,
the apparent effort to traffic guns to murderous criminals in order to
demonize gun rights, and all the other crimes be severely punished.
Congressional “reports” and “investigations” are no substitute for
actual justice.
Related articles:
Fast and Furious Whistleblower Destroys “Botched Investigation” Lie
Guns and Grenades for Cartels; Firing Squad for Whistleblowers
“Drug Lords” Targeted in Fast & Furious Worked for FBI
U.S. Government and Top Mexican Drug Cartel Exposed as Partners
Obama’s “Fast and Furious” Gun-running Scandal Grows
AG Holder Demands U.S. Court Allow Fast and Furious Coverup
White House Was Briefed About "Fast and Furious" Gunwalker Scandal
Documents Show Top Officials Lied About Fast & Furious
Project Gunrunner Part of Plan to Institute Gun Control
Feds Let Mexican Cartel Hit Men Kill in U.S., Senior Lawman Told Stratfor
Fast and Furious Massacres Spark Fresh Pressure on AG Holder to Resign
Issa: Gun-Control Agenda Behind Fast and Furious
Holder Admits Lies in Fast and Furious, Refuses to Resign
Lawmakers Introduce Articles of Impeachment Targeting AG Holder
Blasted as Whitewash, Fast and Furious Report Blames ATF and DOJ
