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.
