Join us at The Heritage Foundation Wednesday at noon or tune in online for a presentation by Katie Pavlich, Townhall editor and author of Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-Up, along with comments on executive privilege by Todd Gaziano, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican citizens are dead, killed with some of the more than 2,000 guns that were allowed to “walk” into the hands of a powerful drug cartel by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). While the Department of Justice (DOJ) initially told Congress that ATF agents did not allow guns to walk intoMexico, the truth eventually came out: Gunwalking was at the heart of Operation Fast and Furious.
Whistleblowers who have been cooperating with Congress’s investigation claim that they have been retaliated against and that the DOJ’s priority appears to be protecting senior political officials from fallout over the scandal.
In the face of subpoenas issued by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the DOJ has turned over a small fraction of the responsive documents that it has in its possession, and many that have been produced are so heavily redacted that they are useless. Congress held Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for his refusal to produce thousands of pages of documents. Some have labeled this investigation a “partisan witch hunt,” but others believe that the Administration is involved in a major cover-up.
The President has now invoked executive privilege with respect to some of these documents. Whether this assertion of executive privilege is proper remains to be seen, but the American people and the victims’ families deserve some answers.
