Recent “Fast and Furious” Report Shows Pattern of “Obstruction”
The third report on the House Oversight Committee’s investigation of the Operation Fast and Furious scandal strongly suggests that the Department of Justice under then-Attorney General Eric Holder engaged in obstruction of Congress, the Citizen’s Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.
“We took our time examining the 262-page report,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “and we are appalled. It has taken six years since hearings were held in 2011 on that Obama administration scandal for this report to be released, and what this document shows is a pattern of deliberate stonewalling by an administration that claimed to be the most transparent in history.
“The report notes how Holder withheld thousands of documents and reached out to President Barack Obama to provide cover with executive privilege,” he continued. “It took two years before a federal judge ordered the DOJ to produce some of those documents, and by then, public interest had waned, almost as if by design.
“Fast and Furious,” Gottlieb observed, “had all the earmarks of a rogue operation that was best described by one federal agent as ‘the perfect storm of idiocy.’ The most disappointing thing of all is that nobody in any government agency was ever held accountable. While some people retired or resigned their positions or were reassigned, and Holder was held in contempt of Congress, that just doesn’t seem like enough.
“Information was withheld from Congress,” he added, “and from the family of slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. The report even acknowledges that officials closest to the operation thwarted efforts to provide complete and accurate responses to congressional inquiries. Who does that unless they have something to hide?
“If anything,” Gottlieb concluded, “this report is a disturbing look at how government operated under Barack Obama and how the Obama-Holder Justice Department tried to keep Congress and the public in the dark about a scandal of monumental proportions. The Obama administration allowed guns to fall into the hands of criminals, and then the Justice Department lied about it just to further their anti-gun agenda.”
With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation’s premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.
SOURCE Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
