Fast and Furious, Eric Holder, Barack Obama, Contempt of Congress

Updates from Washington

By Guest Column U.S. Representative Cynthia Lummis (Bio and Archives)  Monday, June 25, 2012 | Print friendly | Subscribe | Email Us

Dear friends,

U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in 2010.  At his crime scene was a firearm that federal agents had deliberately allowed to be purchased as part of the Fast and Furious operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE).  Under the operation, agents instructed firearms dealers to make sales to suspected “straw buyers” with the full expectation that they would end up in the hands of Mexican cartels.

The operation was a disaster.  The BATFE’s hapless strategy was to let the guns go, unmonitored, with the hope of recovering them later at crimes scenes.  The BATFE oversaw the purchase of nearly 2,000 weapons, some of which have in fact turned up at crime scenes in both the U.S. and in Mexico and the vast majority of which remain at large.  Attorney General Eric Holder defended the BATFE for nearly a year before his Department finally admitted that the operation was seriously flawed.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee issued an October 2011 subpoena for documents necessary to determine why Mr. Holder and his Department went to such great lengths to misdirect and stonewall the congressional investigation.  On Wednesday, after months of Mr. Holder refusing to provide all of the documents, the Committee voted to hold U.S. Mr. Holder in contempt of Congress. 

Minutes before the contempt vote, President Obama invoked Executive Privilege over the documents, begging the question of what the President and his advisors knew about Fast and Furious, when they knew it, and why they are so resistant to coming clean with the American people and the Terry family.  Undeterred, the full House of Representatives is set to vote next week on the contempt citation unless Mr. Holder finally turns over the requested materials. For more information click HERE.

Sincerely,

U.S. Representative Cynthia Lummis