Mexican government officials have estimated that at least 300 people in Mexico were killed with Fast and Furious weapons.
Holder and President Barack Barack Obama have obstructed the congressional investigations into this scandal. After months of failure to comply with a subpoena for Fast and Furious documents, information and witnesses, Holder was voted on a bipartisan basis into criminal and civil contempt of Congress. Obama has asserted executive privilege over the documents.
The DOJ’s internal inspector general recently released a report concluding that Holder was not cleared by his currently ongoing investigation, despite a swath of media coverage saying that Holder was “exonerated” by it. Though he did conclude that he couldn’t find evidence or proof Holder knew about Fast and Furious, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified before Congress that almost everyone in Holder’s inner circle at DOJ did know, and that he and his team think it’s odd at best that Holder didn’t.
“We found, as we outlined in the report, we struggle to understand how an operation of this size, of this importance, that impacted another country like it did, could not have been briefed up to the attorney general of the United States,” Horowitz said during a House oversight committee hearing. “It should have been, in our view. It was that kind of a case.”
Former White House National Security Council staffer Kevin O’Reilly — who was intimately involved in Fast and Furious planning with Phoenix ATF officials, according to emails obtained throughout the congressional investigation — has since been reassigned by the Department of State to a detail in Iraq. Obama administration officials have refused to make O’Reilly available to congressional investigators and to Horowitz’s internal DOJ investigation.
On Friday, CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson reported that congressional Republicans are now threatening to subpoena O’Reilly and force his testimony on Fast and Furious.
Univision has aggressively covered Fast and Furious, and its most recent major run-in with the scandal came when network anchor Jorge Ramos grilled Obama in an interview on the scandal, asking him why he hasn’t “fired” Holder. During the interview, Obama made at least one false statement relating to Fast and Furious.
