All posts tagged Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives

Judiciary Chairman Unleashes on Holder for ‘Partisan’ Ignorance of Constitution

With a scathing roll call of Eric Holder’s sins, Lamar Smith paves the way for the attorney general’s upcoming appearance before his committee.

Via: PJMedia, by BRIDGET JOHNSON

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee launched a scathing attack on the Department of Justice today with a report outlining how Attorney General Eric Holder’s agency is “ignoring the Constitution to impose a partisan agenda.”

“The pattern of pushing partisan ideology rather than neutrally enforcing the law began nearly as soon as the Administration took office and has continued unabated since,” the report from Rep. Lamar Smith states.

The Texas Republican said that under the Obama administration, the Justice Department “has become more partisan than ever.”

Smith has called Holder to testify before the committee on June 7 to answer for that partisanship.

“The Obama administration has ignored the constitutional balance of power between co-equal branches of government and blocked investigations of its actions. When the Administration doesn’t like a law, they refuse to enforce it. And if the Senate’s constitutional authority to approve political appointees gets in their way, the Administration ignores the Constitution,” Smith said.

“All government officials are bound by the limits of the Constitution and the rule of law, including the President and the Attorney General,” the chairman added.

The report delves into several high-profile examples of the DoJ’s quest to “impose the Administration’s partisan agenda on the American people.”

The first of these: Operation Fast and Furious.

“Since the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ (ATF) Operation Fast and Furious first became public in January, 2011, the Department has responded with a consistent focus on avoiding responsibility rather than addressing institutional flaws,” the report states.

Smith’s chairman’s report calls out Holder for his May 3, 2011, testimony before the committee in which he said that he “probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”

Months before the hearing, though, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) had personally handed Holder a copy of his Jan. 27, 2011, letter regarding the matter, and documents later revealed by the DoJ that fall included memos to Holder with summaries of the gun-walking scandal.

Holder denied giving untruthful testimony, but under pressure from lawmakers eventually said he’d meant to say “a few months” before the committee.

The Department of Justice responded to a CBS News Freedom of Information Act request on Fast and Furious last week by sending mostly blank pages to the news network.

Smith’s report also faults the DoJ for “rushing to court to oppose state laws aimed at improving immigration enforcement while ignoring sanctuary cities and other policies which explicitly violate federal immigration law,” knocking its legal action against Arizona’s SB1070.

“Even if the Department’s argument were not entirely frivolous, it is a much weaker case than could be mounted against states like New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois that openly violate their duty to support federal immigration enforcement,” it says. “While Arizona’s law complements and strengthens federal immigration policy, the laws of these states and some of the cities within them explicitly violate the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996—yet DOJ refuses to take any action against them.”

The report asserts that since the DoJ has not brought a single court action to block sanctuary city policies or tuition breaks for illegal immigrants, the choice to focus limited resources on strained, weaker arguments shows the department’s bias.

“The glaring inconsistency can best be explained by highly partisan decision making influencing which cases to pursue,” it says.

“The Justice Department claims to be acting to protect the interests of Congress, arguing that except in narrow circumstances only Congress can legislate immigration enforcement. In truth, the Department ignores Congress except when it can help the Administration achieve its partisan goals, in this case its fiercely anti-enforcement immigration agenda.”

Smith then goes after Holder & Co. for challenging voter ID laws, asserting that it’s due to partisan bias that the Justice Department puts taxpayer dollars to “waste” with its challenges.

“The Justice Department claims that in South Carolina minorities are 20 percent more likely than whites to lack photo ID,” the report states. “This sounds significant until you examine the original data. 90% of minorities have photo IDs compared with 91.6% of whites. The Department’s presentation is mathematically true (because 10% is technically 20 percent more than 8.4%) but it masks that in reality, the Department is battling over a difference of less than 2%.”

The report faults the DoJ for blocking congressional inquiries, including oversight requests — five from the Judiciary Committee alone since July 2011 — probing just how deep of a role Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan had in shaping ObamaCare before her appointment to the court.

The Justice Department has claimed that the Judiciary Committee — studying her background to ensure that federal law governing recusals is adequate — “has no legitimate legislative interest in the material,” according to the chairman’s report.

“The Administration’s lack of cooperation only heightens concerns that they have something to hide,” the report states. “Unfortunately, the Administration’s stonewalling of Congress could result in an unconstitutional law being upheld.”

Smith proceeds to take on the DoJ for refusing to stand behind the Defense of Marriage Act. Holder informed Congress on Feb. 23, 2011, that his department would no longer defend DOMA in court, arguing that it violated the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.

“The unprecedented nature of the Attorney General’s arguments and the evasion of accountability represented by continuing to enforce the law while not defending it combine to support the inference that the Administration’s stance is based on its partisan agenda rather than on a sincere analysis of the Constitution and, as such, the Administration’s non-defense of the Defense of Marriage Act is a usurpation of Congress’s legislative function,” the report states.

Finally, the chairman goes after Justice for turning a blind eye to constitutional limits of President Obama’s recess appointment power.

Obama sparked fury in Congress with three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and another to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Jan. 4. The Senate was not technically in recess at the time, but in pro forma sessions with no business to be conducted — which could be reversed if senators were asked to conduct any business — as agreed by both parties.

Smith linked the appointment to bad advice given to Obama by Justice Department counsel, who found that the President “has discretion to conclude that the Senate is unavailable to perform its advise-and-consent function and to exercise his power to make recess appointments.”

“The invocation by the President of the recess appointment power when the Senate was not in recess was an unconstitutional evasion of the Senate’s power of advice and consent,” the report said. “It encroached upon the Senate’s constitutional prerogatives and aggrandized power to the President.”

After a roll call of Justice Department sins, the chairman concludes that “the Constitution has not been guarded with care.”

“[Holder] promised that under his leadership, the Department of Justice would be free from partisanship,” Smith’s report states. “He testified that in his tenure ‘law enforcement decisions must be untainted by partisanship.’”

“The reality has been different from the promise.”

 

Bridget Johnson is PJ Media’s Washington, D.C., editor.
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CBS News: Holder Handing Over Blank Pages To Requests For “Fast And Furious” Documents…

Via: Zip. It’s almost like he’s hiding something.

(CBS News) — For more than a year, CBS News has been investigating the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms’ “Fast and Furious” operation and related cases that also employed the controversial tactic of “gunwalking.”

With Justice Department officials refusing all interview requests to date, CBS News requested numerous public documents through the Freedom of Information Act.

So far, all of the requests that have been answered have been denied in part or in full.

This week, we received a partial response to a request made more than a year ago. It asked for communications involving “Project Gunrunner,” the umbrella program for Fast and Furious, from 2010 through April 2011.

Specifically, it sought any communications to which any of the following top Justice officials were a party:

Attorney General Eric Holder; Lanny Breuer, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division; Kevin Carwile, chief of the Capital Case Unit; and Deputy Assistant Attorney Generals Bruce Schwarz and Kenneth Blanco.

The response includes mostly-blank pages.

Keep reading…

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Prime gunwalking suspect was held by ATF but released, documents show

Badge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firea...

Via: CBS News

The prime suspect in the botched gun trafficking investigation known as “Fast and Furious” — Manuel Acosta — was taken into custody and might have been stopped from trafficking weapons to Mexico’s killer drug cartel early on. But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) let him go, according to new documents obtained by CBS News.

An ATF “Report of Investigation” obtained by CBS News shows Border Patrol agents stopped Acosta’s truck on May 29, 2010. Inspectors said they found illegal materials including an “AK type, high capacity drum magazine loaded with 74 rounds of 7.62 ammunition underneath the spare tire.” They also noted ledgers including a “list of firearms such as an AR15 short and a Bushmaster” and a “reference about money given to ‘killer.’”

ATF “Report of Investigation”

The Border Patrol ran a check and found Acosta was already “under investigation for firearms trafficking” in Fast and Furious, so they called in the lead ATF case agent Hope MacAllister. Under questioning, Acosta allegedly described his contacts with a Mexican cartel member nicknamed “Chendi,” and admitted going to Chendi’s house for a shipment of narcotics.

More gunwalker questions for Attorney General Holder
PICTURES: ATF “Gunwalking” scandal timeline

But ATF knew even more about Acosta’s alleged illegal activities than what he described in the interview. ATF trace records showed “a large number of the weapons purchase by the Acosta organization are AK type rifles or FN Herstal pistols” which Acosta referred to as “cop killers” and said were preferred by drug cartels.

Instead of pursuing charges, Agent MacAllister asked Acosta if he’d be willing to cooperate with federal agents. He agreed and was released. Apparently, the promised cooperation never materialized. The report notes that 17 days after Acosta was let loose, he still had “not initiated any contact with Special Agent MacAllister.”

In a letter today, Congressional Republicans investigating Fast and Furious asked the Justice Department why Acosta wasn’t arrested in May of 2010. They also want to know why the Justice Department failed to turn over the documents on Acosta’s detainment and release, which were covered under a longstanding subpoena.

Documents: ATF used “Fast and Furious” to make the case for gun regulations

Memos contradict Holder on Fast and Furious
Agent: I was ordered to let guns “walk” into Mexico
Gunwalking scandal uncovered at ATF

One law enforcement source calls the Acosta report “completely embarrassing.” “He’s exporting ammunition, which is a violation of law,” says the source. “But they let him go.”

Before releasing Acosta, MacAllister wrote her contact information on a $10 bill at Acosta’s request, gave it to him, then warned him “not to participate in any illegal activity unless under her direction.”

Acosta wasn’t arrested until Feb. 2, 2011, more than eight months after the Border Patrol stop. By then, ATF had allowed more than 2,000 weapons to “walk” into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, and two of the rifles had turned up at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

The Justice Department and ATF had no immediate comment. ATF officials who approved of Fast and Furious have said they were trying to get to the “big fish” in a drug cartel.

In a related case also run by ATF’s Phoenix office, CBS News has reported a grenade parts trafficker named Jean Baptiste Kingery was caught smuggling 114 disassembled grenades in a tire in 2010, but was released. The same prosecutors faulted in Fast and Furious allegedly refused to bring charges saying grenade parts are “novelty items” and the case “lacked jury appeal.” Mexican authorities arrested Kingery a year later at a stash house with enough materials for 1,000 grenades.

The Inspector General has been investigating Fast and Furious for more than a year. Attorney General Eric Holder, who’s denied knowing about any gunwalking, has said use of the “inappropriate tactics is neither acceptable nor excusable.”

The Justice Department had no immediate comment. ATF told CBS News: “The criminal case is still ongoing in federal court, and there is also inspector general’s investigation looking at the overall case. Therefore, ATF cannot comment about the investigation.

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Obama apologizes for Afghan slayings, still ignores Mexican ‘Fast and Furious’ murders

Fast and Furious: Attorney General Eric Holder is sworn in on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2012, prior to testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing entitled, “Fast & Furious: Management Failures at the Department of Justice”. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Via: Daily Caller

Attorney General Eric Holder is sworn in on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2012, prior to testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing entitled, “Fast & Furious: Management Failures at the Department of Justice”. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

President Barack Obama has never apologized to Mexican President Felipe Calderon for the 300 civilians murdered with weapons the United States provided to Mexico’s drug cartels, but on Sunday he found time to place a call to Afghan president Hamid Karzai apologizing for deaths caused by an American soldier this weekend in Afghanistan.

The Daily Caller asked the White House why Obama hasn’t similarly apologized to Calderon for the murders that resulted from the U.S. policy of providing weapons to the Mexican cartels. Obama spokesman Eric Schultz did not answer.

The Obama administration’s “Fast and Furious” program — organized by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and overseen by the Department of Justice — sent thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels via straw purchasers, or people who legally purchase guns in the United States with the intention of illegally trafficking them somewhere else. This tactic is known as “gunwalking.”

Keep reading…

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Calls for Holder’s resignation heating back up as six more congressmen join the surge

 

Six more U.S. Congressmen have demanded Attorney General Eric Holder leave his post this week in the wake of Operation Fast and Furious, bringing the number of U.S. House members pushing for a change in Justice Department leadership to 109.

Spokespeople for Florida Republican Reps. Cliff Stearns and Mario Diaz-Balart told The Daily Caller their bosses agree with the surging group of members already demanding Holder’s resignation. Meanwhile, four new members have signed onto the official House resolution of “no confidence” in Holder — House Resolution 490 –  because of Fast and Furious: Republican Reps. Bill Huizenga of Michigan, Cory Gardner of Colorado, and Pete Olson and Mike Conaway, both of Texas.

The groundswell has grown steadily since the first House members demanded Holder resign last October. Three U.S. Senators, two sitting governors and all major Republican presidential candidates have joined those 109 House members.

Fast and Furious was a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program overseen by Holder’s Department of Justice in which the Obama administration facilitated the sale of about 2,000 firearms to Mexican drug cartels. The way the Obama administration facilitated these sales is by allowing the weapons to “walk” into Mexico via “straw purchasers.”

Straw purchasers are people who buy weapons in the United States with the known intention of turning around and illegally selling them to somebody else. ATF officials knew what these straw purchasers were doing in Fast and Furious, and chose to allow these transactions to continue instead of intervening in an effort to track the weapons’ movements. That means the ATF allowed the guns to get into the hands of the drug cartels — or let them “walk” — instead of seizing the weapons beforehand

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/07/calls-for-holder%e2%80%99s-resignation-heating-back-up-as-six-more-congressmen-join-the-surge/#ixzz1oS8Hu45e

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CBS has new revelation in Zapata slaying, and Sen. Grassley is not happy Continue reading on Examiner.com CBS has new revelation in Zapata slaying, and Sen. Grassley is not happy

Murdered Border Agent Jamie Zapata

CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson is reporting that a Texas man named Manuel Barba has been sentenced for trafficking a firearm connected to the murder of Jaime Zapata, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent killed more than a year ago in a Mexican ambush.

This obviously came as a surprise to Sen. Charles Grassley, who told this column via e-mail:

“I’ve been asking for information from the departments of Justice and Homeland Security on the circumstances surrounding the murder of ICE Agent Zapata for almost a year, only to be met with resistance and more of the same stonewalling. If these revelations prove to be true, it’s a sad commentary that this known trafficker was allowed to continue his illegal purchases, including trafficking the apparent weapon used in the murder of our own agent.”—Sen. Charles Grassley

 The veteran Iowa Republican, who has been investigating Operation Fast and Furious since January 2011, is not the only person who was surprised by the CBS report. So were members of Zapata’s family and their attorney, who — according to CBS News — “didn’t know that Barba had been arrested or linked to their son’s murder.”

Attkisson is one of a handful of journalists who has been working the story of federal gunwalking since early last year, so she gets her facts straight. Quoting Zapata family attorney Trey Martinez, her story notes:

“They were surprised they had never been contacted in the capacity as victims so they could give a response or some kind of reaction at the time of sentencing.”

The Barba case also reportedly surprised ICE agent Victor Avila, who was wounded in the ambush that took Zapata’s life.

This hardly marks the first time that Sen. Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has had his patience tested in relation to what now appears to be a case with way too many tentacles to be just a foul-up by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. A pattern has emerged that does not help the image of the ATF.

According to CBS News, Barba was under ATF surveillance for several months before a rifle he trafficked ended up at the Zapata slaying crime scene, hundreds of miles away, in a foreign country.

Murdered Border Patrol Officer Brian Terry

This is eerily reminiscent of the case involving Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and the man who bought the rifles recovered at the scene of his murder in Arizona. ATF agents knew that Jaime Avila was a suspect in the Operation Fast and Furious investigation, and they knew that he had purchase a lot of guns. But they didn’t arrest him until hours after Terry was killed, and only after investigators discovered that two of the guns he bought early in 2010 was found at the scene. This column discussed Avila’s purchasing habits early last year.

It is clear from Grassley’s remarks that he is tired of surprises. Here’s something that should not surprise anyone: The Hawkeye State senator is going to demand answers about the Barba case, and he’s not going to be satisfied until he gets them.

(Our thanks to Grassley’s press spokesperson Beth Levine, who secured Grassley’s remark late Wednesday for this column.)

Continue reading on Examiner.com 

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Boehner puts on brakes of Gunwalker investigation

Sipsey Street Exclusive: Meet the “Silent Speaker,” whose foot is on the brake of the Gunwalker investigation. The devil’s own day. “Boner is going to wish he never heard of ‘Gunwalker.’”

The face of the Gunwalker Cover-up. No, not the one on the left, the one on the right with the big mallet.

The night of the first day at Shiloh, when the battle had gone so very wrong for the Union, William Tecumseh Sherman encountered his commander Ulysses S. Grant under a tree, sheltering himself from the pouring rain. He was smoking a cigar while considering his losses and planning what had to be done for the following day. Sherman remarked, “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” Grant looked up. “Yes,” he replied, followed by a puff. “Yes. Lick ‘em tomorrow, though.”

“Lick ‘em tomorrow, though.”

Yesterday was the devil’s own day in the Gunwalker scandal investigation and the search for the truth suffered as a result. Several sources tell Sipsey Street that the committee’s work has been slowed by the intervention of Speaker of the House John Boehner, with some saying plainly that “the fix is in.”

Several sources close to the investigation, have “gone dark,” no longer speaking on conditions of anonymity because they have been warned that to do so will be at the risk of their jobs, Prior to the hearing, this silence was represented to some that the committee was ready to exercise a “nuclear option,” in the phrase of one, so Holder would have no warning of any evidence said to have been gathered by the investigation.

Considered in the cold light of day, such reports have to be considered as the worst hyperbole, if not deliberate disinformation. “Some ‘nuclear option,’” said one. “More like a Black Cat” (a small firecracker).

Said one person very familiar with the investigation:

As for yesterday . . . (it was) a plea bargain of sorts where both sides save face. The Committee will accept the scalps of Breuer and Wienstein, DOJ will release enough of the (documents) to condemn them, claim cooperation (thus giving the appearance of recognizing congress’s oversight authority), and Holder will survive – looking like a “leader” for offering them up (along with a few lower level ATF and DOJ folk). The Committee will chalk one in the “Win” column for oversight and holding people accountable. DOJ will have the same for cooperating and accountability. All sides win, all checks and balance intact and working fine, all powers respected and then they move on to the next act of political theatre. The only ones left to sweep up the mess, are the American and Mexican peoples – ignorantly secure in our beliefs that the system works and that our government is actually for us, by us, and of us.

Keep reading

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Holder Hearings: Democrats Praise Holder’s ‘Dignity and Honor,’ then Call for More Gun Control

Via: Big GovernmentAWR Hawkins

During the House Oversight Committee hearings yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder denounced what he called a “political gotcha game.” And he was not without his defenders, Democrats all, who also tried to spin the hearing into nothing more than an election year sideshow orchestrated by Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA). Yet ironically, even as Holder and his defenders tried to make Issa and his Republican colleagues look like naïve political opportunists, the rhetoric of the Democrats was little more than a politically charged lesson in sycophancy 101.

For example, when Congressman Gerald Connolly’s (D-VA) time began, he addressed the room, and Holder, thus: “Thank you for being here and showing such dignity and honor in the face of some who are suggesting that you are other [than dignified and honorable].” And Congressman Mike Quigley (D-IL)  opened his time by referring to yesterday’s hearing as a “bonfire of the vanities.” He said this was so because “after nearly six hearings, [by those who] are looking for the perfect case to embarrass the AG and the President,” all that’s been learned is that “this is not it.” These two examples were indicative of the praise Democrats heaped upon Holder, and they clearly demonstrated that the facts don’t matter. Rather, they put party and power above the truth.

Yet as stomach turning as this was, perhaps even worse was the Democrats’ unabashed, open pursuit of more gun control during yesterday’s hearings. Almost to a man, once they finished praising Holder they took turns trying to alleviate the pressure he’s under by suggesting Fast and Furious couldn’t have happened if we had more stringent gun control laws. (In making this point, they conveniently overlooked the number of gun control laws that violated with impunity during Operation Fast and Furious.)

So as the saga unfolded yesterday, once Connolly had praised the “dignity and honor” of Holder, he and the AG basically had a conversation in front of the world about the supposed need for a new federal firearms trafficking law.

And Holder indicated that there is no significant federal straw-purchasing law either: so he wants that too. (Here, Holder was disingenuous at best because anyone who has bought a firearm within the last fifteen years knows that on the yellow federal background check form, the buyer has to declare that he’s the actual buyer of the weapon: that he’s not buying it for someone else who can’t legally buy it. In other words, the buyer is declaring that he’s not a straw purchaser.)

And I didn’t even get into the latter portions of Quigley’s time, where he also bemoaned the lack of a new federal firearms trafficking statute, spoke highly of the long gun reporting measure Holder & Co. implemented in the wake of Fast and Furious, and then actually expressed support for expanding the budget of the ATF, as well as boosting the number of ATF agents. And hapless Holder concurred: “If we’re serious, as we all say we are,  in dealing with the problem of guns going to Mexico…we need more people than we have now in ATF.”

When Holder then tried to turn the hearing into a discussion about the need for the Senate to confirm a new head of the ATF, Chairman Issa interrupted and brought matters back to reality by saying the president had spent more than two years without even bothering to nominate a head for ATF.

The bottom line: It’s just not that important to them folks. And Holder (and his defenders) only bring these issues up now as a way to get Issa, Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX), Congressman Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and others, off Holder’s trail. The Democrats have no intention of pursuing justice on the matter of Fast and Furious, and they proved it again yesterday.

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Emails Show How ‘Fast and Furious’ Ambush News Unfolded At Justice Dept.

Via: NPR

WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 08:  U.S. Attorney G...

For the first time, the Justice Department has made public a series of sensitive messages that passed to the highest levels of the agency within hours of an ambush that killed a U.S. border patrol agent along the Southwest border in December 2010, igniting a national scandal over a gun trafficking investigation gone wrong.

Justice officials sent the documents to Congress late Friday evening, only a few days before Attorney General Eric Holder isset to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Murdered Border Patrol Officer Brian Terry

The email messages show the former top federal prosecutor in Arizona, Dennis Burke, notifying an aide to Holder via email on Dec. 15, 2010 that agent Brian Terry had been wounded and died. “Tragic,” responds the aide, Monty Wilkinson. “I’ve alerted the AG, the acting Deputy Attorney General…”

Only a few minutes later, Wilkinson emailed again, saying, “Please provide any additional details as they become available to you.”

Burke then delivered another piece of bad news: “The guns found in the desert near the murder [sic] … officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about — they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store.”

That investigation, dubbed Fast and Furious, was supposed to follow U.S. weapons into the hands of kingpins in the violent Sinaloa Mexico drug cartel, building a big case against the gangs. Instead, it cost Burke his job, got the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms reassigned, and has prompted multiple federal probes by Congress and the department’s own inspector general.

The Justice Department also sent a letter to lawmakers Friday night outlining several changes they had made within their own ranks and at the ATF: from requiring additional oversight in cases that involve wiretaps and confidential informants to extra procedures at the ATF for putting weapons purchases under surveillance to a realignment at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix and the ATF itself.

The new documents are certain to stoke the fires among congressional Republicans, who have questioned what the attorney general knew about the botched investigation and asked why the chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Lanny Breuer, didn’t do more when he found out about other questionable tactics used by ATF in gun trafficking probes in the Bush administration.

In a meeting with Mexican government officials in February 2011, for instance, Breuer “suggested allowing straw purchasers cross into Mexico so [police] can arrest and [prosecutors] can convict. Such coordinated activities between the US and Mexico may send a strong message to arms traffickers.”

A Justice official, speaking on background, said Breuer’s proposal involved coordination between the governments and didn’t contemplate agents losing track of guns, as happened in the Fast and Furious debacle.

A few days after the meeting between Breuer and Mexican authorities, the department’s attache to Mexico raised this issue, according to an email: “there is an inherent risk in allowing weapons to pass from the U.S. to Mexico. The possibility of the [government of Mexico] not seizing the weapons, and the weapons being used to commit a crime in Mexico.”

The attorney general, in testimony to the House and Senate last year, said he feared the Justice Department could be living with the consequences of more than 1,000 guns connected to Fast and Furious that remain unaccounted for years to come.

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Friday Afternoon News Dump: Holder Releases More Fast And Furious Emails…

Thanks to Congressman Issa.

WASHINGTON (AP) –  Newly released Justice Department emails sent to Capitol Hill for a congressional inquiry into a gun-smuggling operation indicate that the head of the department’s criminal division suggested letting some illicit “straw” weapons buyers in the U.S. transport their guns across the border into Mexico where they could be arrested.

According to the emails turned over to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Friday night, the Justice official, Lanny Breuer, made the suggestion to Mexican officials because it “may send a strong message to arms traffickers.”

Mexico has stringent gun control laws with long prison terms as opposed to the U.S., where small-time “straw” buyers working for major arms traffickers seldom face jail time.

Breuer made the remarks in February 2011, around the time that agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were telling congressional investigators that the ATF had allowed hundreds of illicitly purchased guns in the operation known as Fast and Furious flow into Mexico — a controversial tactic known as “gun-walking” aimed at following gun buyers to major traffickers.

The documents on Breuer were among 486 pages of material turned over to the House committee chaired by Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California.

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