Free Republic

If you’re looking for light summer beach reading then do not, I repeat … do not … buy Katie Pavlich’s disturbing new book, Fast & Furious: Barack Obama's Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up. Further, if you want to live undisturbed in Obama la-la-land, you need to put your tennis shoes on and run away from this tome. Indeed, Pollyanna, this book will smash all the windows of your enchanted little cottage and grind your rose-colored Obama glasses into powder. Fast & Furious parlays into the public arena the scurrilous way the ATF, at the behest of the DOJ, allowed...

Exceeds time it took Warren Commission to produce report on JFK murder “I will certainly await the report that comes out of the inspector general and I will assure you and the American people that people will be held accountable for any mistakes that were made in connection with Fast and Furious,” Attorney General Eric Holder testified in a November 8 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. This leads to the questions of why it’s taking so long, and if the end result will be indicative of the self-serving stonewalling and foot-dragging the Department of Justice has exhibited throughout congressional investigations of...

"[T]he Justice Department hid and destroyed evidence that would have exposed my brother's murders, and we believe that Mr. Holder was directly involved in those acts of obstruction of justice." It's not a new accusation. As a matter of fact...

A year ago this week, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. He died protecting his country from brutal Mexican gangsters. Two AK-47 assault rifles were found at his death site. We now know the horrifying truth: Agent Terry was killed by weapons that were part of an illegal Obama administration operation to smuggle arms to the dangerous drug cartels. He was a victim of his own government. This is not only a major scandal; it is a high crime that potentially reaches all the way to the White House, implicating senior officials. It is President Obama’s Watergate. Operation...

Terrorists from several Middle Eastern groups have infiltrated Latin American countries -- especially Mexico -- in order to plot and carry out attacks against the United States, according to an alarming exposé broadcast this week by the world’s largest Spanish news network.

This week in front of the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder doubled down, then tripled down, on Fast and Furious. He dug in, fought back, and pretended nothing is systemically wrong inside his Justice Department. Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) even accused him of potential contempt of Congress, a crime (2 U.S.C. 192). Holder’s testimony was not merely shameful, it was a maturing manifestation of a lawlessness which I first warned about in July of 2010 when I testified about the New Black Panther dismissal. Small acts of lawlessness have given way to larger ones. In the radio...

Scandal: The House committee probing government gun-running now sets it sights on possible money-laundering involving drug cartel funds run in the name of drug enforcement. Why should we believe DOJ this time? It's an old adage that when investigating criminal activity you should follow the money. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has announced an investigation into a money-laundering operation allegedly run by the Drug Enforcement Administration. We may need to follow the people following the money. Just as Fast and Furious was allegedly intended to track and interdict gun-trafficking into Mexico, this operation,...

WASHINGTON — Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials. The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are. They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set...

The Arizona Daily Star's Tim Stellar is reporting the federal case file against illegal Mexican bandits accused of killing Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, has disappeared. The case against the alleged killers of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry has disappeared from federal court records, apparently sealed by a federal judge. In May, federal prosecutors won an indictment against Manuel Osorio-Arellanes and others, and they announced it with a press release. Only Osorio-Arellanes’ name was visible in the indictment, but there were blacked-out words where other defendants’ names go. Osorio-Arellanes was charged with second-degree murder and was not considered the likely...

Article For Immediate Release October 31, 2011 New Gun Walking Documents Show Criminal Division Knew More than Previous Acknowledged Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley made the following statement after the Justice Department provided more than 650 pages of documents related to the congressional inquiry into Operation Fast and Furious.  Grassley has been conducting oversight of the strategy since January. “There are 652 pages of documents that our investigators will scour over the next several days, beyond the few that the Justice Department pointed out.  At first glance, though, the documents indicate that contrary to previous denials by...

“Justice Dept. proposes lying, hiding existence of records under new FOIA rule,” The Daily Caller reports. A proposed revision to Freedom of Information Act rules would allow federal agencies to lie to citizens and reporters seeking certain records, telling them the records don’t exist. “A final version of the proposed rule could be issued by the end of this year. If approved, the new rule would officially become a federal regulation with the force of law,” Investors.com warns. Presumably the Nixon White House could have used the rule during Watergate to say, "Tape? What tape? It doesn't exist." This rule...

Mexican drug suspect: U.S. gave me immunityBy Sharyl Attkisson(CBS News) A Mexican drug suspect awaiting trial in Chicago is making a startling claim. He insists he can't be prosecuted because he worked as an informant and had a secret immunity deal with the U.S. government. ATF Fast and Furious investigationNapolitano testifies on ATF Fast and Furious: "We're waiting for the Inspector General"For more on this investigation, visit CBS News Investigates Prosecutors say Vicente Zambada-Niebla oversaw drug running on a massive scale into the U.S. But now, from behind bars at a maximum security prison in Chicago, he's making his...

Is The FBI Suppressing Evidence? In a follow-up to this morning's Face The Nation interview of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) about Operation Fast and Furious, CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson reports that the committee will be asking for more information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Issa said this morning that the family of Agent Terry was told by agents attending his funeral that there were three firearms found at the murder scene. Documents released to the committee only mentioned two weapons linked to Operation Fast and Furious. Issa wants...

Word leaked yesterday that Rep. Darrell Issa would subpoena Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice for the complete set of unredacted documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious. Today, Issa tells Holder, “You’ve been served“: House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) today announced the issuance of a subpoena to Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr. for Justice Department documents related to the “Operation Fast and Furious” gun walking scandal. “Top Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Holder, know more about Operation Fast and Furious than they have publicly acknowledged,” said Chairman Issa. “The documents...

High-powered assault weapons illegally purchased under the ATF's Fast and Furious program in Phoenix ended up in a home belonging to the purported top Sinaloa cartel enforcer in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, whose organization was terrorizing that city with the worst violence in the Mexican drug wars. In all, 100 assault weapons acquired under Fast and Furious were transported 350 miles from Phoenix to El Paso, making that West Texas city a central hub for gun traffickers. Forty of the weapons made it across the border and into the arsenal of Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, a feared cartel leader in Ciudad...

WASHINGTON - New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress. On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, "I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks." ---snip--- The Justice Department told CBS News that the officials in those emails were talking about a different case started before Eric Holder became Attorney General. And tonight they tell...

News documents indicate that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder more than likely perjured himself in congressional testimony about Operation Fast and Furious earlier this year. Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News and William LaJeunesse of Fox News have been the only mainstream media reporters diligently working on the most important scandal in White House history, and it is no surprise that they concurrently released information indicating that the attorney general, who claimed in direct testimony on May 3 of this year in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he first heard about Operation Fast and Furious “over...

The cover-up of Fast and Furious is unraveling at breakneck speed. As a result of the ongoing investigation by Rep. Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, the LA Times and Townhall.com are both reporting Mexico has been kept in the dark about the deadly fallout of the botched operation. While information about the mounting carnage trickles out, a black cloud has descended over the White House, the DOJ and American-Mexican relations. From Townhall.com: "I would be remiss if I didn't mention, as the Attorney General in Mexico is so concerned, she's made the point that at least 200...

In a conference call this morning with Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa, reporters were told the Attorney General in Mexico has confirmed at least 200 murders south of the border happened as a result of Operation Fast and Furious. Eleven crimes in the United States have been linked to Operation Fast and Furious up to this point. Issa said he expects as the investigation in the operation continues, more crimes connected to Fast and Furious will come to light and be exposed. This is not surprising, considering out of 2500 weapons the Obama Justice Department allowed to...

WASHINGTON - "Watch your back," the gun dealer warns the ATF Agent in an audio recording obtained by CBS News. The secretly recorded conversations are between the primary gun dealer cooperating with ATF in its "Fast and Furious" operation, Andre Howard, and lead case ATF agent Hope MacAllister. Howard owns Lone Wolf Trading Company in Glendale, Arizona. Secret recordings raise new questions in AFT 'Gunwalker' case As CBS News first reported last February, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allegedly allowed thousands of weapons to "walk" onto the streets without interdiction into the hands of suspected traffickers for...

CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson has revealed a recent document submitted by the Department of Justice to congressional investigators. The document shows that guns linked to Operation Fast and Furious are responsible for at least three more murders in addition to the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry: Weapons linked to ATF’s controversial “Fast and Furious” operation have been tied to at least eight violent crimes in Mexico including three murders, four kidnappings and an attempted homicide. According to a letter from U.S. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the...

Fox News is reporting that a third gun apparently found at the murder scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was linked to Operation Fast and Furious, but its existence may have been deliberately concealed by the FBI to protect the identity of an informant “who works inside a major Mexican cartel.” That informant, according to the report by Fox reporter William Lajuenesse, “provided the money to obtain the weapons used to kill Terry.” This tends to support statements made by Kenneth Melson, former acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to congressional investigators in a...

“These guns went to ruthless criminals,� Carlos Canino, ATF Acting Attaché to Mexico said in testimony on Capitol Hill Tuesday regarding the scandal-plagued Operation Fast and Furious. “It’s alleged that over 2,000 guns were trafficked in this investigation. To put that in context, upon information and belief, the U.S. Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment has approximately 2,500 rangers. That means that as a result of this investigation, the Sinaloa cartel may have received almost as many guns that are needed to arm the entire regiment. Out of these 2,000 weapons, 34 were .50-caliber sniper rifles. That is approximately the number of...

The Obama administration sought to intimidate witnesses into not testifying to Congress on Tuesday about whether ATF knowingly allowed weapons, including assault rifles, to be “walked” into Mexico, the chairman of a House committee investigating the program said in an interview Monday. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, California Republican, said at least two scheduled witnesses expected to be asked about a controversial weapons investigation known as “Fast and Furious”received warning letters from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to limit their testimony. Mr. Issa's committee is set to hear testimony from six current...

ATF Acting Director Ken Melson's testimony shows just how far the DOJ has gone to impede the investigation and to protect political appointees.Attorney General Eric Holder continues to duck responsibility for Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed more than 2,500 weapons, including thousands of AK-47 variants and .50 caliber sniper rifles, across the Mexican border and into the hands of the cartels. The weapons were used to murder Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and an estimated 150 Mexican nationals. In May of this year, Holder was called to testify in front of Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) House Committee on Oversight...

Operation Fast and Furious (F&F) – a program run by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that allowed thousands of lethal weapons to cross the Mexican border – was apparently no secret among high-level political authorities at the Department of Justice (DOJ). Among those in the know? Newly-confirmed Deputy Attorney General James Cole. Information is now seeping out about the political whiplash that secured a confirmation vote for Cole in exchange for the DOJ’s release of documents to Congress. In a supremely ironic twist, the documents ransomed by Cole’s confirmation strongly suggest that Cole himself was...

Email Confirms ‘Gunwalker’ Known Throughout Justice Department The October 27, 2009 email from ATF Phoenix Field Division Special Agent in Charge (SAC) William Newell regarded a Southwest Border Strategy Group meeting that focused on Fast and Furious. It contained a laundry list of high ranking Justice Department officials that attended the meeting, including: * Assistant Attorney General (Criminal Division) Lanny Breuer, * Kenneth Melson, Acting Director, ATF * William Hoover, Acting Deputy Director, ATF * Michele Leonhart, Administrator, DEA * Robert Mueller, Director FBI Four other Justice Department directors or their representatives came from the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task...

When the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee released a report -- “The Department of Justice’s Operation Fast and Furious: Accounts of ATF Agents -- it infuriated law enforcement officers and American citizens across the country. One police commander in New Jersey told Law Enforcement Examiner, "We need to get to the bottom of this renegade operation fast. I am furious that our government actually contributed to the killing of two American law enforcement officers -- one in the U.S., the other in Mexico." The at times shocking report includes testimony from four Bureau of...

Gunwalker: Holder’s resignation is almost inevitable And the only way that doesn’t happen is if he is fool-enough to stay in office, Obama is fool-enough not to fire him, and Congress has no choice but to remove him from office. Consider: On the 4th of July, a national holiday, acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives gave testimony to House and Senate investigators on Operation “Fast and Furious,” aka “Gunwalker.” Without telling his bosses. And bringing his own lawyer, not the Bureau’s and not the Department of Justice’s. To quote Allahpundit — Dude! This morning, House...

Brit Hume was on Fox News Sunday this morning while the panel was discussing Operation Fast and Furious: [VIDEO AT SITE] Hume: This is a real scandal. And once again we have the classic question "what did the Attorney General, for example, know and when did he know it." This Obama Justice Department reminds me of nothing so much as the Nixon Justice Department. You have the scent of high level knowledge, of serious wrongdoing, and you have the smell of cover-up and I think the stench of cover-up on this gunrunning operation is very strong indeed. How high this...

Newly released documents show that the Department of Justice (DOJ) allowed for the release of Marxist radical and domestic terrorist Marilyn Buck from federal prison because officials believed she learned her lesson and had “expressed a dramatic change from her previous political philosophy.” These new documents, obtained by investigative journalist Cliff Kincaid’s America’s Survival organization, shed more light on why Holder’s officials decided to release Buck, a convicted radical left-wing domestic terrorist. “Incredibly, Buck’s attorney, Soffiyah Elijah, cited Buck’s ‘Master of Fine Arts in Poetics,’ completed behind bars, as evidence that she deserved parole. It’s a fraud and a racket,”...

While Holder didn’t pull any triggers, the Department of Justice was involved in Gunwalker from the beginning. A detective assembles a crime’s “history” by collecting and examining evidence, which eventually leads him to the perpetrator. When sufficient evidence points to a reasoned conclusion, perpetrators are arrested and prosecuted in court. Crimes consist of means, motive, and opportunity. So it is with ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious, also known as “Gunwalker.” Violent crimes committed with Gunwalker firearms Besides Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder, “Mexican officials estimate 150 of their people have been shot by Fast and Furious guns.” This indicates...

In one of the most chilling revelations yet about the violence in Mexico, a drug cartel-connected trafficker claims fellow gangsters have kidnapped highway bus passengers and forced them into gladiatorlike fights to groom fresh assassins. The elderly are killed. Women raped. And able-bodied men are given hammers, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the death. In an interview arranged by intermediaries on condition neither his name nor the location of his Texas visit be published, the trafficker also admitted to helping push $5 million to $10 million a month worth of cocaine into the U.S. Law-enforcement sources confirm...

High-level source concedes DOJ let off CAIR co-founders and others for political reasons. ...a number of leaders of Islamic organizations (all of whom publicly opposed the King hearings on Muslim radicalization) were about to be indicted on terror finance support charges by the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas, which had been investigating the case for most of the past decade. But those indictments were scuttled last year at the direction of top-level political appointees within the Department of Justice (DOJ) — and possibly even the White House.

U.S. trial unlikely for 9/11 suspect Mohammed: report Sat Nov 13, 2:21 am ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The self-proclaimed mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks probably will remain in military detention without trial for the foreseeable future, The Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing Obama administration officials. The administration has concluded that it cannot put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial in federal court in New York City because of opposition from members of Congress and local officials, the Post said. There is also little support within the administration for a military prosecution at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo...

While election results aren't usually affected, voter fraud is common. And electoral integrity is perhaps more important than the outcome. In the fall of 2008, Tarrell Campbell was a student at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. With his three separate masterÂ’s degrees, he had been on a college campus, somewhere, for more than a decade. He was so interested in the outcome of the 2008 presidential election that he cast a ballot in Illinois, then drove across a Mississippi River bridge to his hometown of St. Louis and voted again.Last week, Mr. Campbell entered a guilty plea to federal voter...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Americans woke up to news of a car bomb in New York‘s Times Square and a national debt surpassing $13 trillion in May. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) was preparing for a ―Fun Day celebration in Texas,1 a luau in Tennessee,2 and other parties and fun activities across the country. With our nation facing the heightened threats of domestic terrorism and unprecedented debt and financial challenges, taxpayers should be shocked to learn DOJ crime prevention grant programs are paying for parties and rollercoaster rides for children rather than focusing on investigating crimes, locating...

Obama Justice Department outrages never cease. The politically charged gang led by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is more interested in helping felons vote than in helping the military to vote. Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, has put a legislative hold on the already troubled nomination of James M. Cole to be deputy attorney general until the attorney general ensures full protection for voting rights of our military (and associated civilian personnel) stationed abroad. The senator is right to raise a ruckus. Mr. Cornyn co-authored a 2009 law mandating that states mail absentee ballots to military voters at least...

Before King Samir Shabazz wielded a nightstick outside a Philadelphia polling station ... before he was videotaped calling white people "crackers" and urging blacks to kill them and their babies ... the head of the New Black Panther Party in the City of Brotherly Love was singing about being trained by Usama bin Laden. The New Black Panther Party claims to believe in nonviolence, but a song performed by Shabazz's group, Coup Da’Ta, in 2004 includes descriptions of violent attacks against police as well as anti-Semitic statements and claims of having trained with both the most-wanted terrorist in the world...

SNIPPET: "Washington (AP) - Attorney General Eric Holder says there's a real question about whether a terrorist suspect such as self-professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed can face the death penalty if he were to plead guilty before a military commission."

From 2002, roll tape: EyeBlast.tv has uncovered another rare video of the New Black Panthers Chairman Malik Shabazz from a closed door meeting, this time the footage shows him praising Osama bin Laden just 6 months after the September 11 terrorist attacks on March 22, 2002.

Lawyer Who Defended 'American Taliban' Now Heads DOJ Suit Against Arizona The federal prosecutor tasked with quarterbacking the Obama administration's high-profile case against Arizona's immigration law is no stranger to controversy or the limelight. fox news The federal prosecutor tasked with quarterbacking the Obama administration's high-profile case against Arizona's immigration law is no stranger to controversy or the limelight. Justice Department attorney Tony West is a member of the so-called "Gitmo 9" -- a group of lawyers who have represented terror suspects. West, the assistant attorney general for the department's Civil Division, once represented "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, a...

Former DOJ employees want to go on record praising Adams' outstanding work record, and — pay attention, DOJ press liaisons — maybe corroborate Adams' charges about DOJ hostility to race-neutral law enforcement. (Check back here for updates in the hours and days ahead, as PJM posts additional statements.)Several former DOJ employees have been in contact with Pajamas Media, interested in publicly supporting J. Christian Adams as he comes forward about the DOJ’s failure to enforce the country’s laws from a race-neutral perspective. These former DOJ employees have expressed a willingness to go on record regarding Adams’ professionalism, excellent performance, and...

As widely anticipated, Attorney General Eric Holder today filed a lawsuit against Arizona and Gov. Jan Brewer over the state’s immigration law. The suit seeks a preliminary injunction to stop the law from being implemented. The court filing states that Arizona law is pre-empted by federal law and therefore violates the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution.The filing makes no assertion that the law is discriminatory or risks being applied in a discriminatory fashion, as the president and other officials said they feared would be the case. Interestingly, this suit makes no civil rights charges against the Arizona law.You can...

The federal government just filed suit against the state of Arizona for daring to enforce the law. It's deeply troubling to see the federal government attacking our own state governments to protect lawbreakers, but on the plus side, the lawsuit was filed by Eric Holder, which means at least the legal work should be sub-par.

J. Christian Adams was proud to be a Department of Justice attorney. He believed he was serving his country by prosecuting those who wished harm on others. He strongly believed in what he did. To this DoJ official, his profession wasn’t a job but a calling. Until earlier this month when he suddenly resigned. The reason? His superiors told him to drop a case against the New Black Panther Party, even though the “case was the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law I saw in my Justice Department career.” Reading Adams’ account of what happened, I can only...

They refuse to enforce the Constitutional mandate to secure the border. They refuse to listen to the American people’s wishes on health care. They refuse to listen to the American people wishes to stop deficit spending. Any law that Democrats disagree with they simply disregard as unworthy to obey. Such was the case with Democrat San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom who unlawfully disregarded California’s marriage laws and instituted his own law in San Francisco. [Newsom] instructed city employees to break the law by instituting homosexual mock weddings which resulted in a political and legal quagmire for the citizens of California.(see...

For Immediate Release June 7, 2010ORGANIZERS OF GAZA FLOTILLA HAVE VIOLATED US NEUTRALITY ACT** * Israeli Law Center Calls on U.S. Attorney General to Investigate American Funding of Gaza Boats ***Shurat HaDin - Israel Law Center has written a letter to the American Attorney General, Eric Holder, asking him to investigate whether the U.S. Neutrality Act (18 USC § 960) was violated by Left-wing organizations that funded the Gaza flotilla. The letter also asks for an investigation of whether the Free Gaza Movement (FGM) which organized the illegal boat expedition was involved in money laundering and efforts to defraud the...

A team of Justice Department attorneys reviewing the new immigration law in Arizona has recommended that the U.S. government challenge the state law in federal court, but the recommendation faces an uncertain future and tough scrutiny from others in the Justice Department, sources with knowledge of the process tell Fox News. Staff attorneys within the Justice Department recently sent higher-ups the recommendation. At the same time, the Justice Department's Civil Division, which oversees the majority of immigration enforcement issues for the department, has drafted a "civil complaint" that would be filed in federal court in Arizona, sources said. The draft...

Nice work, SEIU. Service Employee International Union members descended upon the home of a banker to protest the banker's work. The banker wasn't home but his teenage son was and he was home alone and the 14 bus loads of union thugs scared the heck out of the poor kid. This was no political protest, it was an inciting, angry mob of union thugs. The Fortune Magazine piece that reported the incident made a salient point about the whole thing. Targeting homes and families seems to put SEIU in the ranks of (now jailed) radical animal-rights activists and the Kansas...