Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update

Whole lot of shaking going on over the past 2-3 days. Let's start with the fact that ATF Director Kenneth Melson testified in secret on the 4th of July to the House Oversight Committee and that he had in his presence his personal attorney instead of one from ATF or the Justice Department.

Top Republican lawmakers have authored an explosive new letter containing details of secret testimony by acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson, which reveal for the first time the extent to which his agency was involved in an international gun selling scandal.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, fired off the letter to Attorney General Eric Holder Tuesday detailing what Melson told Congressional investigators in a secret July 4 testimony.

One key takeaway from the meeting was that Melson acknowledged to investigators that agents had witnessed transfers of weapons from straw purchasers to third parties without following the guns afterwards. Straw purchasers are people who could technically legally buy guns in the U.S. but their intent was to turn around and sell them to drug cartels in Mexico.

Another point Melson clarified for investigators was that the ATF group carrying out the mission of Operation Fast and Furious was placed under the direction of the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s office. The U.S. Attorney in Arizona, Dennis Burke, is a political appointee of the Obama administration.

And then there was this:

An email cited in Senator Charles Grassley’s testimony in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Operation Fast and Furious indicates that knowledge of the program was spread across the highest levels of the Justice Department. This lends even greater suspicion to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s claim that he knew nothing about the program until well after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed.

Of course, as you would expect, the email doesn't come anywhere close to hinting at the gun-smuggling operation Fast and Furious turned out to be but rather it details a comprehensive plan calling for working with the Mexican government to take down Mexican drug cartels.


Bob Owens (linked above) does a nice job of putting a wrap on things:

Senior law enforcement officers within the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security, including government appointees, potentially committed felonies that led to the deaths of dozens, if not hundreds of Mexican police, soldiers, and civilians, and the murders of least two American federal agents. This program was put in place in order to pursue a phantom gun-smuggling network that only seemed to exist in the the minds of those pushing a political agenda of gun control championed exclusively by the left wing of the Democratic Party, Attorney General Eric Holder himself, and the president of the United States, Barack Obama.

(italics, ours)

Despite the legacy media completely ignoring this (can we squeeze anything more out of the Casey Anthony trial, please?), this does not appear to be going away anytime soon. We'll keep you posted as best we can.