Trump Administration To Release Obama-Era Fast And Furious Documents

We may finally get some answers to the high-level Obama administration’s gun-running scandal dubbed “Fast and Furious.”  The Trump administration is promising to release the documents pertaining to that scandal that were withheld by former Attorney General, Eric Holder.

Operation Fast and Furious was the Obama-era operation in coordination with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) in which the federal government allowed criminals to buy guns in Phoenix-area shops with the intention of tracking them as they were transported into Mexico. But the agency lost track of more than 1,400 of the 2,000 guns they allowed smugglers to buy.

“For over six years, the House Oversight Committee has fought for additional documents related to Operation Fast and Furious. Today, the Committee finally reached a conditional settlement with the Department of Justice,” Amanda Gonzalez, spokeswoman for the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement to Fox News. “The Committee seeks all relevant facts so we can learn from the mistakes made by the Justice Department. We have a responsibility to uncover why they worked so hard to hide this information from the Committee, the family of [slain border patrol agent] Brian Terry, and the American people.”

Brian Terry was killed in 2010 by an illegal immigrant with a weapon used in the botched Operation Fast and Furious. Terry died in a gunfight between Border Patrol agents and members of a six-man cartel “rip crew,” which patrolled the desert along the U.S.-Mexico border looking for drug dealers to rob. The cartel member suspected of killing Terry was apprehended in 2017.

Terry’s brother, Kent Terry also wants the scandal investigated.

#FastAndFurious @realDonaldTrump Sir it"s been 7 yrs .my family ask you reopen Obama"s gun scandal that cost my brother his life..I talk to you back on the campaign trail here in Michigan and you offered to reopen the books into this senseless scandal .thank you.God bless

— Kent terry (@terry_superman) March 3, 2018

“We need to find out the truth, exactly what happened, how it happened, why it happened,” Kent Terry said on Fox & Friends Tuesday. “We need Mr. Trump, President Trump, to unseal the documents, reverse executive privilege so that we know what happened, and that we can hold the people accountable that are responsible.”

According to Fox News, the Justice Department entered into a conditional settlement agreement with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The settlement agreement was filed in federal court in Washington D.C. and ends six years of litigation arising out of the previous administration’s refusal to produce records requested by the committee.

“The Department of Justice under my watch is committed to transparency and the rule of law,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement Wednesday. “This settlement agreement is an important step to make sure that the public finally receives all the facts related to Operation Fast and Furious.”

The White House has yet to release an official statement on the Justice Department’s settlement.

Without Personal Consequences, Oversight Fast and Furious Report Brings No One Closer to Justice

To paraphrase a line from “The Dirty Dozen”: Very pretty. But can they fight? (House Oversight and Government Reform Committee )

“Committee releases Fast & Furious report: Obstruction of Congress by the Department of Justice,” a Wednesday House Oversight and Government Reform Committee press release reads. “Documents obtained after years of litigation reveal the full depth of DOJ’s obstructionist tactics.”

The Committee then lists “key takeaways” of the 263-page report, essentially claiming:

• Holder’s DOJ didn’t give a damn about slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s family.


• Holder’s DOJ conducted a sham “investigation” designed to spin rather than reveal.


• Holder’s DOJ didn’t give a damn about Congress.

Let me step back for a moment and allow Gomer to weigh in on this:

The Committee needed more documents to come to those conclusions? Really? And now that they have them, what are they going to do with them?

Are they going to subpoena characters like former National Security Council North American Affairs Director Kevin O’Reilly, rather than lamely accept his refusal to testify on why he requested information from ATF SAC William Newell and was then conveniently assigned out-of-country when questions started being asked? And why that refusal was insisted upon by the then-White House Counsel?

Are they going to do anything to find out what State (Hillary) knew and when it (she) knew it?

Are they planning on directing Holder to testify anew, and leveling any further charges? Like perjury?

Will anyone be held legally accountable for the hundreds of deaths from a cynical program designed, as an ATF insider noted early on, “to pad statistics” (as opposed to the ubiquitous (and demonstrably ridiculous) “botched gun sting” excuse promulgated by the media? Will anyone end up behind bars?

A promise is a promise, Mr. President.

It’s also fair to ask – outside of the Committee – what does President Trump intend to actually do to keep his promise to the Terry family to get to the bottom of this? And will AG Sessions’ self-recusal on this have any impact on that?

If I seem cynical, you’ll either have to forgive me – or not. The record of how this ball got rolling is right here if anyone is interested.  Mike Vanderboegh and I were pleading then for Congress and the media to do something meaningful then, and people have no idea what that effort actually required and took.  I’m tired of pleading. It’s enough that we have been borne out, even if we and a handful are the only ones likely to ever be aware of those efforts.

Even fewer will ever realize that had Oversight not ignored our public pleas from a few years earlier, ATF would have been under scrutiny in 2009, before they ever started sanctioning gunwalking.

Bottom line: If the upshot of all this is words, finger-pointing, political gamesmanship, media placement and no results, this report will be representative of nothing so much as a line from Macbeth:

[I]t is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Prove me wrong, Oversight Committee. I beg you.

NOTE: Some of the links used in this article will be slow-loading. The referenced articles originally appeared on the now-discontinued Examiner.com site and are now only retrievable via the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine.

Here’s the related Committee recording of “Fast and Furious: Six Years Later”:

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