Congress to Finally Investigate Fast and Furious Scandal

Operation Fast and Furious certainly makes history as the government’s worst-thought-out scandal.

For anyone in need of a summary, Fast and Furious was a so-called “gun-walking” operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) from 2009 and 2011.

The plan was to encourage certain Arizona gun merchants to sell firearms to known criminals in the hope that law enforcement would be able to then trace the weapons from Arizona as they (ideally) crossed the border into Mexico, eventually ending up in the hands of drug cartels. Apparently the ATF could then infiltrate those cartels somehow.

Operation fast and furious

What could possibly go wrong? Well as you’d expect, a lot. Over 1,700 weapons were lost after crossing the border (out of only 2,000 total – meaning most weren’t actually tracked). Mexico’s government said in September of 2011 that at of then, there had been an undisclosed number of guns found at about 170 crime scenes were linked to Fast and Furious.

Nobody responsible paid any price for the disaster – but that could change now.

On Wednesday the House Oversight Committee, chaired by outgoing Congressman Jason Chaffetz, will hold a hearing re-examining Operation Fast and Furious and the Obama administration’s handling of the scandal.

The goals of the hearing are to “identify what the new officials at the Department of Justice can learn from the mistakes made by their predecessors in responding to Congress’s inquiry” and “to understand the effect of the Justice Department’s obstruction on these witnesses.”

Attorney General Holder became the first sitting cabinet member to be voted in civil and criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over thousands of documents about the operation. President Obama, who claimed to know nothing about Fast and Furious, invoked executive privilege to stop DOJ documents from being released.

Terry’s mother Josephine and his sister Kelly Terry-Willis will testify during the hearing alongside ATF whistleblower John Dodson.

Dodson, who first publicly exposed DOJ and ATF had been covering up extensive gun running and the cause of Terry’s murder, wrote a book in 2013 called The Unarmed Truth: My Fight to Blow the Whistle and Expose Fast and Furious.

The twittersphere showed excitement about the hearing, with some hoping that it would finally lead to criminal charges being pursued.

You’d think there would be more outrage among liberals for this one. Not only did our government’s actions lead to hundreds of dead Mexicans, they were killed using American guns (and we all know that according to liberal logic, one person killed with a gun is as bad as 20 killed in an Islamist attack).

H/T Townhall

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By Matt

Matt is the co-founder of Unbiased America and a freelance writer specializing in economics and politics. He’s been published... More about Matt

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