Matthew Boyle:
The top deputy to Attorney General Eric Holder announced his resignation on Thursday amid revelations that Operation Fast and Furious scandal guns were used to harm Americans in Phoenix in 2013, a development top congressional Republicans say President Obama’s administration sought to cover up.
Documents released by conservative government watchdog group Judicial Watch—and put forward by Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)—show that an assault rifle purchased as part of Fast and Furious was used in a Phoenix-area crime in July 2013 that left two people wounded.
Part of a police report shows the rifle’s serial number, 1977DX1654. Judicial Watch obtained the documents from a lawsuit it filed against the city of Phoenix, Judicial Watch v. City of Phoenix, to get officials to release the documents. Judicial Watch had filed an Aug. 5, 2014, public records request with the city, which it ignored, forcing Judicial Watch to file the lawsuit on Oct. 2.
“Thanks to our lawsuit, Congress has been able to confirm what Judicial Watch already reported—that a Fast and Furious weapon was used in yet another violent crime that terrorized and injured residents of Phoenix,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a Thursday statement:
Our lawsuit against Phoenix exposed how the Obama cover-up of Fast and Furious is ongoing. Eric Holder’s Department of Justice is a mess. It has endangered the public and is engaged in an ongoing cover-up of its insanely reckless Fast and Furious gun-running operation. Judicial Watch appreciates the refreshing diligence of Senator Grassley and Congressman Issa in pursuing the truth about Fast and Furious.
Sen. Grassley and Chairman Issa took that document Judicial Watch obtained and compared it to other documents they obtained from the Fast and Furious investigation to confirm it was indeed bought by a Fast and Furious straw purchaser. They revealed the finding in a Thursday letter to Deputy Attorney General James Cole, the number two highest-ranking official at the Department of Justice who announced his plans to resign the DOJ shortly thereafter on Thursday. Cole said in an interview with The Washington Post that he plans to leave because he wants to work in the private sector, but he did not say it had anything to do with Fast and Furious.
“Based on the serial number from the police report obtained by Judicial Watch and documents obtained during our Fast and Furious investigation, we can confirm that the assault rifle recovered in the vehicle on July 30, 2013 was purchased by Sean Christopher Steward,” Grassley and Issa wrote to Cole. “Steward pled guilty to firearms trafficking charges resulting from his involvement with Operation Fast and Furious.”
In Operation Fast and Furious, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents, under the direction of their supervisors, orchestrated situations in which criminals known as “straw purchasers” were allowed to purchase firearms from Phoenix-area gun stores. Straw purchasers are people who buy guns for others, and are regularly employed by criminal enterprises and weapons smugglers for groups like the Mexican drug cartels. Normally, ATF agents arrest such people as they make straw purchases, but during Fast and Furious they did not. During Fast and Furious, the federal agents let the guns and their purchasers get away—and hundreds of guns ended up in the hands of cartel operatives in Mexico. The scandal broke wide open after one gun was used in the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in December 2010, but hundreds of Mexicans are thought to have been killed with the guns, and congressional leaders who have investigated the matter say they expect more violence in both Mexico and the U.S.—like this instance in Phoenix—with the Fast and Furious weapons.
And didn’t Eric the Red just recently ‘bail out’ hmmm!
The house of crap is starting to tumble down