In what has become a pattern, Attorney General Eric Holder dumped more documents related to Operation Fast and Furious on congressional investigators late Friday.
Terry Frieden of CNN reported that Holder coughed up “hundred of pages” of documents. Assuming that means Holder did not produce more than 1,000 documents, the Justice Department is still far from compliance with lawful congressional subpoenas.
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has subpoenaed 80,000 pages of documents concerning Fast and Furious. Holder has only provided about 7,000 pages. He has, however, given all 80,000 to his internal investigator — DOJ’s Office of Inspector General.
Issa has laid the groundwork to hold Holder in contempt of Congress in the near future if he doesn’t comply with the subpoenas.
Frieden also reported that few of the documents Holder dumped on Congress are actually related to Fast and Furious.
“Most of the documents deal with a 2007 operation involving Fidel Hernandez, who the ATF believed would be prosecuted for gun violations in Mexico by Mexican authorities,” Frieden wrote.
According to congressional Democrats on the House oversight committee, in the “Hernandez case” ATF agents, working with Mexican police, planned to track illegal weapons as they left the United States all the way to their final destination. But Mexican police reported they never saw the vehicle that ATF agents had followed to the border. (RELATED: Full coverage of Operation Fast and Furious)
By contrast, in Fast and Furious, President Barack Obama’s administration intentionally let guns fall into the hands of criminals and did not let Mexico’s government know of the plan.
The U.S. government lost track of the guns as soon as ATF agents let them “walk,” or end up in the hands of straw buyers — people who legally purchase weapons in the U.S. before illegally passing them off to arms traffickers. Known drug cartel criminals ended up getting a hold of the weapons and, at that point, the only place ATF agents could recover the weapons was at crime scenes.
When Mexican drug cartels commit murders, it’s a common practice for them to leave the firearms they used in the killings at the scene of the crime.
This latest document dump comes on the heels of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz throwing their public support behind Holder — all while the DNC itself dissembled and attacked The Daily Caller for pressing the political party for answers about the Fast and Furious scandal.