Operation Fast and Furious - Gunwalker: White House Lied and People Died

Included among the recent shakeup of resignations and transfers in the D.O.J. was the sudden resignation of U.S. attorney Dennis Burke. After the sacking of Burke occurred the investigation into Fast and Furious gained momentum and it revealed evidence of a huge coverup which was initiated within mere hours after the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.  Is the coverup worse than the crime? And, yes I do call what the Department Of Justice instituted a crime. The crime and the coverup are both horrific and unconscionable. How much brain power or logic does it take to know you shouldn't put guns in the hands of criminals, let the Mexican drug cartels walk across the border with those guns without their being supervision of the criminals or the guns and then just let the criminals keep the guns courtesy of the U.S. government. This was all about the Obama administration setting up a situation so they could promote their anti-second amendment gun control agenda. They obviously didn't care about the safety of either Americans or Mexicans. Liberalism kills. This is just one more example of that.


Eric Holder lied about when he knew about Operation Fast and Furious. He also covered up for the Obama White House when he claimed that the White House didn't have any knowledge of Fast and Furious but emails have now brought to light that the White House was indeed briefed on fast and Furious.  Plus the investigation has now divulged that guns were recovered from the scenes of twice as many violent crimes that were originally told to investigators.

From Pajamas Media:

Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News reports that a coverup kicked in within hours of Brian Terry’s murder:

In a letter, Grassley and Issa say the lead prosecutor on Fast and Furious, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley, learned almost immediately that guns allowed onto the street in his case, had been recovered at Terry’s murder. “(I)n the hours after Agent Terry’s death,” says the letter from Grassley and Issa, Hurley apparently “contemplated the connection between the two cases and sought to prevent the connection from being disclosed.” The Justice Department recently transferred Hurley out of the criminal division into the civil division.

An internal ATF email dated the day after Terry’s death reveals the quick decision to not disclose the source of the weapons found at the murder scene: “… this way we do not divulge our current case (Fast and Furious) or the Border Patrol shooting case.”

Another ATF email indicates that the justification both offices used to not charge the suspect with crimes related to the murder scene “was to not ‘complicate’ the FBI’s investigation.”

ATF whistleblowers revealed the link between the two cases to Congressional investigators and CBS News, saying their supervisors were attempting to cover it up.

Citing the documents in their possession suggesting the conspiracy, Rep. Issa and Sen. Grassley demanded that the new U.S. attorney for Arizona, Ann Scheel, provide documentation — including emails, memos, and even handwritten notes from members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office — that may relate to the coverup. They also stated that they wanted to hear testimony from three more Justice Department officials: Assistant U.S. Attorneys Emory Hurley and Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Cunningham, chief of the DOJ Criminal Division.

The DOJ originally claimed that Fast and Furious weapons had been recovered at 11 crime scenes in the United States, but a Fox News investigation now reveals that a total of 42 Fast and Furious weapons were recovered at those crime scenes. Revised DOJ figures now also admit that an additional 21 Fast and Furious guns were tracked to violent crimes in Mexico.

Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Richard Serrano reveals that the White House had been communicating about the gun-running operation, despite previous denials:

The supervisor of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation in Phoenix specifically mentioned Fast and Furious in at least one email to a White House national security official, and two other White House colleagues were briefed on reports from the supervisor, according to White House emails and a senior administration official.

But the senior administration official said the emails, obtained Thursday by The Times, did not prove that anyone in the White House was aware of the covert “investigative tactics” of the operation.

The White House response involves an interesting choice of phrasing, stating that these emails did not prove that the White House was aware of the tactic of allowing thousands of guns to “walk” to the cartels. Mike Vanderboegh, one of the bloggers most responsible for bringing Gunwalker to light, calls the White House response a “Nixonian ‘modified limited hangout,’” and states that the smoking gun evidence of more White House involvement does exist.

For now, congressional investigators are tightly focusing their probe into the actions of the Department of Justice and the ATF, and have spent very little time — publicly, at least — delving into the roles that the FBI and DEA have played in the scandal. Likewise, investigators have not yet focused their energies on the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Dennis Burke, the U.S. attorney that just resigned as a result of his actions in the plot and coverup, was the long-time chief-of-staff for Napolitano while she was governor of Arizona. It is unlikely that a high-risk operation run on Napolitano’s “home turf,” where she had been both governor and state attorney general and was still responsible for national security, happened without her being personally briefed.

Sen. Charles Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa have made it clear that they aren't going to let the recent shake-up in the DOJ due to "Operation Fast and Furious" slow down their investigation into the criminal questionable program. Not long after this they have made good on their promise and demanded any correspondence such as emails, memos, notes, and other documents from six top officials from the Phoenix office.

From Hot Air:

“The level of involvement of the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona in the genesis and implementation of this case is striking,” the letter states. It continues:

Operation Fast and Furious was a prosecutor-led Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) Strike Force case. The congressional investigation has revealed that your office, and specifically Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) Emory Hurley, played an integral role in the day-to-day, tactical management of the case. In fact, Mr. Hurley served as a prosecutor on this case until very recently.

Witnesses have reported that AUSA Hurley may have stifled ATF agents’ attempts to interdict weapons on numerous occasions. Many ATF agents working on Operation Fast and Furious were under the impression that even some of the most basic law enforcement techniques typically used to interdict weapons required the explicit approval of your office, specifically from AUSA Hurley. It is our understanding that this approval was withheld on numerous occasions. It is unclear why all available tools, such as civil forfeitures and seizure warrants, were not used in this case to prevent illegally purchased guns from being trafficked to Mexican drug cartels and other criminals. We have further been informed that AUSA Hurley improperly instructed ATF agents that they needed to meet unnecessarily strict evidentiary standards merely in order to temporarily detain or speak with suspects.

It is essential for Congress to fully understand your office’s role in Operation Fast and Furious. … In addition, it is imperative that the Committee have an opportunity to discuss the facts above with individuals in your office who are familiar with the details of this operation. It is not our intention to second guess day-to-day decisions of your staff, but rather to make sense of them. The Attorney General has said that “letting guns walk is not something that is acceptable.  … We cannot have a situation where guns are allowed to walk, and I’ve made that clear to the United States Attorneys as well as the agents in charge of various ATF offices.” Operation Fast and Furious is unique in that guns were allowed to walk with the apparent knowledge of, and authorization by, officials in your office.

Oh my!  Did Eric Holder and the Obama administration seriously think that by shuffling personnel and scapegoating the guys at the bottom of the totem pole was going to stop the investigation this letter makes it abundantly clear that those involved with this investigation are not going to be played for fools.  Eric Holder and the Obama administration better not mess with Sen. Grassley and Rep. Issa.  They mean business and are determined to get to the bottom of this huge scandal and coverup.  

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Returns To D.C. To Vote Yea; Debt Ceiling Bill Passes House

I think it is wonderful that Gabby Giffords returned to Washington D.C. so that she could cast her vote for the debt ceiling bill.  Welcome Back Rep. Gabrielle Giffords!!! She has had an absolutely amazing recovery. God Bless her on her continued healing.  Whether you like the bill or not her miraculous recovery and her having felt such an obligation to return to D.C. to cast her vote for this bill is what America is all about.  Here she is being given a standing ovation on the House Floor.

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H/T HotAirPundit

The Debt Ceiling Bill has now passed through the House.  The Senate will be voting on the bill tomorrow. I don't have much of the details on the debt deal at this point in time but from what I have heard so far I have mixed feelings on the debt deal, debt bill. Here are some of the details: 

-$2.8 trillion in deficit reduction with $1 trillion locked in through discretionary spending caps over 10 years and the remainder determined by a so-called "Super Committee.

-The Super Committee must report precise deficit-reduction proposals by Thanksgiving.

-The Super Committee would have to propose $1.8 trillion in spending cuts to achieve that amount of deficit reduction over 10 years.

-If the Super Committee fails, Congress must send a balanced-budget amendment to the states for ratification. If that doesn't happen, across-the-board spending cuts would go into effect and could touch Medicare and defense spending.

-No net new tax revenue would be part of the special committee's deliberations.

Let's just say that I'm skeptical of this whole Super Committee and what their recommendations are going to be.  Thank God for the Tea Party. If it wasn't for the Tea Party there probably would not have been any meaningful spending cuts, if cuts at all, in this debt ceiling deal. The Tea Party held the establishments' feet to the fire. This is just one step at the beginning of the Tea Party representatives and senators journey to bring back principled, limited government to Washington.   

The Obama Administration, the Health Care Law, and Double Counting, Again?

Back in November of 2010 Reason.com noted that Donald Berwick refused to comment when confronted during a Senate hearing about the administration's claim that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act extends the Medicare Trust Fund.  It seems that Donald Berwick is standing by the Obama administrations double counting of savings in the new health care law.

From Reason.com:

For those in need of a refresher, here’s Medicare’s actuary:

In practice the improved (Medicare hospital insurance) financing cannot be simultaneously used to finance other Federal outlays (such as the coverage expansions) and to extend the trust fund, despite the appearance of this result from the respective accounting conventions.

And here’s CBO:

To describe the full amount of HI trust fund savings as both improving the government’s ability to pay future Medicare benefits and financing new spending outside of Medicare would essentially double-count a large share of those savings.

Now you see that both the CBO and Medicare actuary's analysis of savings from the health care law differ from that of the Obama administration.  So, basically, both the CBO and medicare actuary findings conclude that the Obama administration's wrong. Maybe, that's why Berwick refused to answer the question?

Recently, Rep. John Shimkus pointedly forced Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius to admit to the fact that the Obama administration is double counting the savings from the health care law.  The Obama administration is using trickery to give the appearance that there can be savings in the budget while using that same savings to fund another program - "the $500 billion cut in Medicare that supposedly goes for both cost control and to fund other parts of the program."   



From HotAir.com:

In her first appearance before the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee since the health-care law passed, Kathleen Sebelius responded to a line of questioning by Republican Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois about whether $500 billion in Medicare cuts were used to sustain the program or pay for the law.

“There is an issue here on the budget because your own actuary has said you can’t double-count,” said Shimkus. “You can’t count — they’re attacking Medicare on the CR when their bill, your law, cut $500 billion from Medicare.”

He continued: “Then you’re also using the same $500 billion to what? Say your funding health care. Your own actuary says you can’t do both. […] What’s the $500 billion in cuts for? Preserving Medicare or funding the health-care law?

Sebelius’ reply? “Both.”

In other words, money can only be used once. Since the Medicare savings is being spent elsewhere on expanded health care coverage, it is not really being employed to extend Medicare solvency. To claim an improvement in Medicare financing is to mislead about the effects of recent legislation.

A couple days ago I received an email from my Congressman, Rep. Tim Murphy, that reveals more double counting in the health care law -  an $86 billion Ponzi scheme in the health care law.

"Efforts to calculate the true cost of the healthcare law continued at the Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday, where a hearing explored the financial integrity of a new long-term insurance “benefit” called the Community Living Assistance Services & Supports (CLASS) program. Intended to provide spending cash to workers who become disabled, CLASS has been characterized by accountants, and even the Administration’s own Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, as “totally unsustainable.”

"The CLASS program is a new government entitlement established by the healthcare law that would be funded with premiums deducted directly from workers’ paychecks. If a worker became disabled and had paid into the program, they would collect $50 a day from the government. But the Congressional Budget Office has suggested that the CLASS program will attract the sickest and most at-risk beneficiaries, therefore requiring massive taxpayer subsidies to keep CLASS afloat beyond ten years.

"During questioning by Rep. Murphy at Thursday’s hearing, a senior Administration official admitted that instead of using premiums paid into CLASS to pay benefits, the government was using the premiums to pay for the healthcare law.

“If any insurance company began collecting premiums and then tried to spend $86 billion before paying out a single penny in benefits, it would rightly be prosecuted,” said Murphy. “Last time I checked, such Ponzi schemes are illegal in this country, and this is just the newest in a long string of programs that will have to be de-funded or repealed outright.”  

IMPEACH OBAMA!!

IMPEACH OBAMA FOR CRIMES AGAINST OUR CONSTITUTION,  CRIMES AGAINST OUR CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, AND FORCING TYRANNY UPON AMERICA'S CITIZENS.