eric holder
Eric HolderLast May, Attorney General Eric Holder told the House Judiciary Committee that he had not heard of Operation Fast and Furious until just a few weeks prior. In case you missed it, this was the gun-walking project in which thousands of firearms were sold to Mexican drug lords, using taxpayer dollars appropriated by the 2009 stimulus bill.

The guns have been used in several crimes, including the murder of border patrol agent Brian Terry.

Unfortunately for Mr. Holder, there’s a pesky paper trail of memos that proves he knew about the operation. Mr. Holder had indeed been (repeatedly) briefed on Fast and Furious, as early as July 2010 -- 10 whole months before he claims to have had any knowledge.

The White House Press Secretary claims that Holder has been “consistent and truthful about Fast and Furious,” but that might depend on what the definition of ‘is’ is. After all, what’s consistent and truthful about saying you just found out about something when in fact you’ve known about it for the better part of a year?

The Justice Department is claiming that Holder may have heard the term 'Fast and Furious' before, but that he wasn’t aware of the details involved until much more recently. If that’s true, then our Attorney General is an incompetent nincompoop, because it’s not exactly rocket science to read the following and think it sounds like a bad idea: 

The [Fast and Furious] operation was described as an 'investigation, initiated in September 2009 in conjunction with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Phoenix Police Department, involves a Phoenix-based firearms trafficking ring headed by Manuel Celis-Acosta. Acosta and (redacted) straw purchasers are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug trafficking cartels. They also have direct ties to the Sinaloa Cartel which is suspected of providing $1 million for the purchase of firearms in the greater Phoenix area.'

Eric Holder is either lying or stupid. Either way, it’s time for him to resign. The families that have lost loved ones at the business end of those walked guns deserve that justice. The whole operation was a bad idea, start to finish, and we need an Attorney General that would never allow such an atrocity to ever occur again.

 

Image via ryanjreilly/Flickr