Fast and Furious Scandal Rocks Obama DOJ

I don’t believe we’ve seen a more corrupt, politicized and incompetent Department of Justice (DOJ) in modern political history than we have now under President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. And I never thought I’d write those words after suffering eight years of Attorney General Janet Reno during the Clinton administration.

But check this out as reported by The Associated Press:

The Justice Department replaced three officials Tuesday who played critical roles in a flawed law enforcement operation aimed at major gun-trafficking networks on the Southwest border.

The department announced that the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the U.S. attorney in Arizona had resigned and an administration official said a prosecutor who worked on the operation was reassigned to civil cases.

The operation, known as Fast and Furious, was designed to track small-time gun buyers at several Phoenix-area gun shops up the chain to make cases against major weapons traffickers….

A congressional investigation of the program has turned up evidence that ATF lost track of many of the more than 2,000 guns linked to the operation.

The ATF, with the full approval of the DOJ, allowed guns to be sold and sent to the Mexican drug cartels in the hopes of having them show up at crime scenes in Mexico! This reckless craziness seems to have resulted in, among other crimes, the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed in a shootout with Mexican criminals in December, 2010. Fast and Furious guns were found at the scene of his death.

Last week the Acting ATF Director Kenneth E. Melson was transferred to a make-work position in the DOJ and the U.S. Attorney in Phoenix resigned.

But Eric Holder still has his job!

(I suspect that Melson wasn’t reassigned for the Fast and Furious fiasco itself but because he told Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) that the senior officials at the DOJ were trying to suppress information about the scandal. Rep. Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) deserve great credit for ferociously investigating and exposing this scandal.)

(And now today we know the White House was kept abreast of this criminal enterprise run by the Obama administration appointees. In classic scandal-control fashion, the Obama gang seems to have leaked this blockbuster information on the Friday before the Labor Day holiday in the hopes no one notices a key piece of information in what could very well be the biggest scandal of this presidential administration.)

At any rate, to get to the bottom of the Fast and Furious scandal, our investigators already filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with ATF and another division within the Obama DOJ on July 13, 2011. Here’s what we’re after:

All records of communications, contacts and correspondence between Director Kenneth E. Melson and any official, officer and employee of the Office of the Deputy Attorney General regarding ATF Phoenix Operation Fast and Furious.

All records prepared for or submitted to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform related to Director Melson’s interview with the committee on July 4, 2011.

All records of communication between any ATF official, officer or employee (including Director Melson and ATF Phoenix Special Agent in charge William Newell) and any official, officer or employee of the Drug Enforcement Administration regarding Operation Fast and Furious.

All records regarding, concerning or related to the October 26, 2009 meeting/telephonic conference call between Director Melson, DAG David Ogden, AAG Lanny Breuer, DEA Administrator Michelle Leonhart, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and other Justice Department officials regarding the Southwest Border Strategy (including, but not limited to, any agendas, minutes, transcripts, notes or presentations).

(As detailed in this Townhall story, that October 26, 2009, meeting between top DOJ officials might just shed some light on this egregious scandal.)

We’re also trying to obtain correspondence between the ATF and some Washington Post reporters who wrote glowing pieces about the ATF gun-busting campaign. We think it’s important to find out if the Obama ATF ran the Fast and the Furious operation as part of a press effort to advance their anti-Second Amendment agenda through a liberal media outlet.

And one would suspect that the anti-American Obama administration was desperate to blame “American guns” for the Mexican violence. Not to mention that it all distracts from the fact that one of the key reasons for the drug gang-fueled violence in Mexico is the unsecured border that allows the drug/human trafficking trade to thrive!

As you may have already guessed, given the Obama administration’s penchant for illegal secrecy, we have yet to receive substantive responses to our various requests. So you can expect a lawsuit (or lawsuits) to be filed very soon.