The Tea Party controlled House of Representatives has approved a precedent-setting resolution to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal contempt of Congress. Threatened by the NRA with the withholding of campaign money and support, political prostitution and partisan hackery prevailed!
Republicans passed the resolution claiming Holder hasn't turned over documents regarding a failed gun-tracking operation called Fast and Furious.
But the realities belie the Republican smear.
Fortune report complicates Fast and Furious story. Writer: 'There was no effort to get more guns to the straw purchasers'
By Siddhartha Mahanta - Wed Jun 27, 2012 7:31 PM EDT
Wednesday night on Politics Nation, Katherine Eban of Fortune magazine threw a major stumbling block into the GOP’s much-ballyhooed Fast and Furious investigation, in which Republicans are seeking to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt.
For her Fortune story, published Wednesday, Eban reviewed 2,000 pages of confidential documents and interviewed 39 people who could shed light on allegations that guns bought by ATF-surveilled "straw purchasers" wound up in the holsters of Mexican drug lords.
“There was no effort to get more guns to the straw purchasers,” Eban said in an interview with host Al Sharpton, summarizing her findings. “The ATF agents in question did everything that they could to seize guns, and basically prosecutors determined that they didn’t have grounds under the laws as written to seize most of the guns that wound up flowing ultimately to criminals; that is a far cry from guns being walked.”
And ...
The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal
June 27, 2012: 5:00 AM
A Fortune investigation reveals that the ATF never intentionally allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. How the world came to believe just the opposite is a tale of rivalry, murder, and political bloodlust.
By Katherine Eban
FORTUNE -- In the annals of impossible assignments, Dave Voth's ranked high. In 2009 the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives promoted Voth to lead Phoenix Group VII, one of seven new ATF groups along the Southwest border tasked with stopping guns from being trafficked into Mexico's vicious drug war.
Some call it the "parade of ants"; others the "river of iron." The Mexican government has estimated that 2,000 weapons are smuggled daily from the U.S. into Mexico. The ATF is hobbled in its effort to stop this flow. No federal statute outlaws firearms trafficking, so agents must build cases using a patchwork of often toothless laws. For six years, due to Beltway politics, the bureau has gone without permanent leadership, neutered in its fight for funding and authority. The National Rifle Association has so successfully opposed a comprehensive electronic database of gun sales that the ATF's congressional appropriation explicitly prohibits establishing one.
What this is likely about is Attorney General, Eric Holder's efforts to stop the Koch Brother-driven voter suppression laws in Florida and a number of other states under Republican control. This is what it's about.
The NRA and the Koch Brothers are buying Congress!
Oh, and by the way, if you want to see what we're dealing with, watch this! ISSA SAYS HE HAS NO EVIDENCE ...