PA Bill Number: HB917
Title: Adopting the Uniform Family Law Arbitration Act.
Description: Adopting the Uniform Family Law Arbitration Act. ...
Last Action: Presented to the Governor
Last Action Date: Apr 29, 2024
Documents suggest Holder knew more about Fast and Furious, says Issa :: 11/07/2014
In an interview yesterday with Fox News, House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) said that documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious that are now under scrutiny by committee staff suggest that Attorney General Eric Holder was copied on e-mails about the operation and that he apparently knew more than he indicated during hearings on the bungled gun running sting.
Attorney General Eric Holder apparently knew more about Fast and Furious, says Congressman Darrell Issa.
Holder announced his resignation after a federal judge ordered the surrender of some 64,000 documents, including e-mails, that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform had subpoenaed. When Holder would not turn over the documents, he became the first sitting attorney general to ever be held in contempt of Congress, on a bipartisan vote.
The gun trafficking scheme was used as the reason for imposing tighter regulations on licensed firearms dealers in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. This move convinced many in the firearms community that Fast and Furious was exploited by anti-gunners in the administration to impose the new sanctions, even though Arizona officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had encouraged gun dealers to sell firearms even when they suspected something was amiss with the buyers.
Fox News has also reported that a possible successor to Holder could be Loretta Lynch, currently the U.S attorney in Brooklyn. She is a Harvard Law School graduate, and is apparently on a list of possible candidates to replace Holder.
The documents, according to Fox News, included one scathing e-mail written by Holder that said, "Issa and his idiot cronies never game a damn about this when all that was happening was that thousands of Mexicans were being killed with guns from our country. All they want to do -- in reality -- is cripple ATF and suck up to the gun lobby. Politics at its worst - maybe the media will get it."
Missing from this remark is any acknowledgement that guns allowed to "walk" into the hands of Mexican cartel gunmen as part of the Fast and Furious investigation were perhaps largely responsible for the carnage south of the border. Anchor Bill Hemmer suggested that Holder may have wanted Issa to see that e-mail.
Holder had fought to keep those documents away from the committee. They were turned over Monday night, and Issa suggested that the Justice Department held out to the bitter end and released them on the one day that they wouldn't affect the mid-term election outcome.
"Ultimately, this has been delayed by more than two and a half years," Issa said. "But justice delayed is still justice that we have to seek - and when it comes to (slain Border Patrol agent) Brian Terry, his family, and so many people across the border that were affected by not just the activities, but the lies and cover up by the Attorney General's staff, we need to continue exploring it."
Terry was the Border Patrol agent who was killed in a December 2010 desert shootout, and two guns directly linked to Fast and Furious were recovered at the crime scene in southern Arizona. That was the incident that ignited the investigation by National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea and independent "citizen journalist" Mike Vanderboegh. Former CBS investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson also extensively covered the story, as did Fox News' William La Jeunesse. Attkisson won an Emmy for her reporting, which included an exclusive interview with an ATF whistleblower that revealed the operation to CBS News' national audience.
The resulting scandal led to hearings before Issa's committee, and to the stalemate over the documents, which had been protected by President Barack Obama under a claim of executive privilege. But the committee hearings were very partisan at times, with Ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings occasionally sparring with Issa as though he were running interference for Holder and the administration.
During yesterday's Fox interview, Issa asserted about Holder that, "It looks very much like he's CC'd on everything. He's back and forth, intimately involved, including e-mails that come from the minority staff, Elijah Cummings' staff, that make their way directly to the attorney general."
Issa also complained that the documents were delivered in such a way as to make them very difficult to read in an orderly manner. However, Issa promised that the investigation will continue and that all of the surrendered documents will be studied.
"We're going to get the American people the truth," Issa said.
http://www.examiner.com/article/documents-suggest-holder-knew-more-about-fast-furious-says-issa
