Tag Archives: Gun Trafficking

News

Details of another Fast and Furious massacre to be revealed by Univision

Leave a comment

From the Daily Caller, more news about the Obama administration’s plan to facilitate the sale of assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels.

Excerpt:

Spanish-language television network Univision plans to air a television special that it said reveals more violence than previously known, as well as the stories of how many more Operation Fast and Furious victims were killed, the network announced in a Friday release.

“The consequences of the controversial ‘Fast and Furious’ undercover operation put in place by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2009 have been deadlier than what has been made public to date,” the network said. “The exclusive, in-depth investigation by Univision News’ award-winning Investigative Unit — Univision Investiga — has found that the guns that crossed the border as part of Operation Fast and Furious caused dozens of deaths inside Mexico.”

Among other groups of Fast and Furious victim stories Univision says it will tell in the special to air Sunday evening at 7 p.m., is one about how “16 young people attending a party in a residential area of Ciudad Juárez in January of 2010″ were gunned down with weapons the Obama administration gave to drug cartel criminals through Fast and Furious.

“Univision News’ Investigative Unit was also able to identify additional guns that escaped the control of ATF agents and were used in different types of crimes throughout Mexico,” the network added. “Furthermore, some of these guns — none of which were reported by congressional investigators — were put in the hands of drug traffickers in Honduras, Puerto Rico, and Colombia. A person familiar with the recent congressional hearings called Univision’s findings ‘the holy grail’ that Congress had been searching for.”

A video preview published on Friday shows a number of the bodies of people killed with Fast and Furious weapons, as well as victims’ family members pleading with outgoing Mexican President Felipe Calderon for justice.

Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan has now become the 131st Congressman to call for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Excerpt:

Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan agrees with presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s call for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign, or for President Barack Obama to fire him, over Operation Fast and Furious, a Ryan spokesman told The Daily Caller.

“The congressman agrees with the governor,” Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck told TheDC on Sunday, referring to Mitt Romney’s call for Holder’s resignation or termination over the gunwalking scandal last December.

“Either Mr. Holder himself should resign, or the president should ask for his resignation or remove him,” Romney said in December 2011. “It’s unacceptable for him to continue in that position now given the fact that he has misled Congress and entirely botched the investigation of the Fast and Furious program.”

Ryan’s call for Holder’s ouster over Fast and Furious comes a day after he told a sportsmen’s group that gun owners should be worried about Obama trying to infringe on their Second Amendment rights if he is re-elected. Speaking about Fast and Furious specifically, Ryan said at the Saturday event that such an operation “would never occur under a Romney-Ryan administration,” according to CBS News.

[…]Fast and Furious was a program of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, overseen by Holder’s Department of Justice. It sent thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels via straw purchasers — people who purchased guns in the United States with the known intention of illegally trafficking them somewhere else.

Fast and Furious guns were used to kill U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry on Dec. 14, 2010, in Peck Canyon, Ariz.

Wouldn’t it be neat if this were to come up in an election debate?

Related posts

News

Obama campaign contributor and gun control advocate ran Fast and Furious

Leave a comment

From Investors Business Daily:

A campaign contributor who was an architect of the 1994 assault weapons ban was the mastermind behind the Fast and Furious operation that let guns walk into Mexico, including those that killed two U.S. agents.

Shortly after the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry on Dec. 15, 2010, Attorney General Eric Holder’s deputy chief of staff, Monty Wilkinson, received an email from U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke telling him just that:

“The guns found in the desert near the murder(ed) BP officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about — they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store.”

It is an email that helps demonstrate that Holder, despite his congressional testimony — as vague, contradictory and misleading as it was — could not have been ignorant about Fast and Furious and its deadly consequences.

It also brings to light the name of Dennis Burke, a seldom-mentioned Obama campaign donor who oversaw Fast and Furious and helped convert it from a gun-interdiction to a gun-walking program.

Burke, who resigned shortly after the scandal became public, has long been a gun-ban architect for the Democratic Party.

As a lawyer for the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he was behind the ineffectual 1994 “assault weapon” ban that sunset in 2004. Burke was also the chief of staff for Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano for a number of years before she became the secretary of homeland security.

Former Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., had high praise for Burke’s 1994 effort: “Dennis had all these pictures of these guns — the street sweepers and the AK-47s. And it passed by one vote. A lot of it was not my eloquence on the bill; it was stuff that Dennis had done.”

Burke also is an Obama donor, a prime consideration in the staffing of the Obama administration. Federal Election Commission records show that on Jan. 9, 2008, while working for Napolitano, Burke contributed $2,000 to Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential primary campaign. Since 1997, according to FEC records, Burke has given $16,350 to Democratic candidates.

Burke would leave that Gov. Napolitano post to join the Obama transition team. He was soon rewarded for his many contributions, monetary and otherwise, when on July 10, 2009, the president nominated him to be the U.S. attorney in Arizona. The Senate confirmed him that Sept. 15.

In July 2010, Burke told the Arizona Capitol Times there had “clearly been direction provided already by President Obama and Attorney General Holder as to what they want to be doing.”

Please see below for more Fast and Furious news.

Related posts

News

Attorney general Eric Holder faces possibility of jail after citation for contempt

Leave a comment

From Fox News.

Excerpt:

The GOP-led House voted Thursday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to provide key information pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious, making Holder the first sitting Cabinet member to be held in contempt.

The vote was 255-67, with 17 Democrats breaking ranks to side with Republicans in favor of contempt.

[…]Congressional sources tell Fox News that House GOP leaders will now meet to decide the next steps, but the investigation is expected to go forward with more subpoenas being issued.

“Today’s vote is the regrettable culmination of what became a misguided and politically motivated investigation during an election year,” Holder said afterward. “By advancing it over the past year and a half, Congressman Issa and others have focused on politics over public safety.”

The vote, which holds the attorney general in criminal contempt, was followed by a second vote that held Holder in civil contempt of Congress. The civil contempt vote allows Congress to go to court to seek additional documents.

The criminal-contempt vote is supposed to direct a U.S. attorney to convene a grand jury to review the case and decide whether to indict Holder.

However, considering Holder would be investigated by his own employees, some analysts have said it’s unlikely that would happen. If the case proceeds, though, Holder could face a maximum one year in jail if convicted.

Now that’s bipartisanship you can approve of.

Related posts