Judicial Watch had filed, on June 22, 2012, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious and “specifically [a]ll records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012.”
The administration has refused to comply with Judicial Watch’s FOIA request, and in mid-September the group filed a lawsuit challenging Holder’s denial. That lawsuit remains ongoing but within the past week President Barack Obama’s administration filed what’s called a “motion to stay” the suit. Such a motion is something that if granted would delay the lawsuit indefinitely.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that Holder’s and Obama’s desire to continually hide these Fast and Furious documents is “ironic” now that they’re so gung-ho on gun control. “It is beyond ironic that the Obama administration has initiated an anti-gun violence push as it seeking to keep secret key documents about its very own Fast and Furious gun walking scandal,” Fitton said in a statement. “Getting beyond the Obama administration’s smokescreen, this lawsuit is about a very simple principle: the public’s right to know the full truth about an egregious political scandal that led to the death of at least one American and countless others in Mexico. The American people are sick and tired of the Obama administration trying to rewrite FOIA law to protect this president and his appointees. Americans want answers about Fast and Furious killings and lies.”
The only justification Holder uses to ask the court to indefinitely delay Judicial Watch’s suit is that there’s another lawsuit ongoing for the same documents – one filed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Judicial Watch has filed a brief opposing the DOJ’s motion to stay.
As the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was voting Holder into contempt of Congress for his refusal to cooperate with congressional investigators by failing to turn over tens of thousands of pages of Fast and Furious documents, Obama asserted the executive privilege over them. The full House of Representatives soon after voted on a bipartisan basis to hold Holder in contempt.
If you’re an American law-enforcement agent on duty in Mexico, you’re out of luck:
Because the official role of U.S. agents south of the border is limited to intelligence gathering and training their Mexican counterparts, they are barred by Mexico from carrying weapons.
…
U.S. agencies involved in intelligence and training operations in Mexico include the CIA, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and others. Their presence has increased since the launching of the 2008 Merida Initiative, in which American operatives help Mexican law enforcement officials go after the violent and ruthless Mexican drug cartels, according to law enforcement sources.
President Obama gave tacit approval to Mexico’s prohibition against U.S. agents carrying weapons in March 2011, following the ambush killing of ICE agent Jaime Zapata and the wounding of his partner, Victor Avilla.
“There are laws in place in Mexico that say our agents should not be armed,” Obama said.
Too bad he forgot about those 2,000 Fast and Furious weapons the DoJ shipped to Mexico. But I digress.
And DEA spokesman Michael Rothermund said it’s for Mexico to decide if American agents can carry guns in Mexico, not the U.S.
“The Drug Enforcement Administration respects the sovereignty and rules of the Government of Mexico that says United States Law Enforcement is not allowed to carry firearms,” Rothermund said.
In light of Obama’s recent “amnesty pact” with Mexico’s new Socialist President Enrique Pena Nieto, is the work of the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies becoming more difficult to execute? If the two leaders are on the same page with regards to both border security and Obama’s immigration policy as they say they are, it’s Americans citizens who on the front lines of the drug war that will suffer the consequences.
Due to a prior commitment, I couldn’t watch Univision’s broadcast of their Fast and Furious investigation last night. Univision has the videos here, where you can watch the entire series without English subtitles. Among their findings,
Some of the Mexican authorities knew about F&F, which contradicts statements from Mexican functionaries saying they had no knowledge of the program.
An ATF source asserts that Operation Castaway, launched in Florida, allowed weapons to end up in the hands of drug cartels in Honduras, Colombia and Puerto Rico.
Lawyers of ICE agent Jaime Zapata, who was murdered in a Mexican highway, state that the weapons were used by a gang being investigated by the ATF on a separate investigation.
Sooper Mexican has video with subtitles of part of the show:
The hour-long Univision report revealed the existence of another 57 guns recovered by Mexican authorities, including some of those used in the mass-murder at a party just one year after Obama’s inauguration...
…
These 57 recovered weapons discovered are in addition to the 122 weapons referenced in a congressional report. It is chilling to learn that each weapon recovered was dumped at the scene of a crime by cartel members who had attempted, and in most cases completed, the crime of first-degree murder. It is even more disturbing to know that American Department of Justice officials knew that most of the weapons walked over the border would only be discarded by the police and recovered by Mexican authorities after they were used in a crime, and that they were indifferent to the body count being racked up, callously noting that to make an omelet, eggs had to be broken.
Additionally,
While the Univision report focused on guns the DOJ ran to Mexican cartels, there is enough evidence to suggest other Obama administration-sanctioned gun-walking plots arming domestic criminal gangs, such as the so-called Gangwalker plot in Indiana, which supplied Chicago street gangs, and similar rumored operations in California, North Carolina, northern Florida, and elsewhere, which provided weapons to gangs in U.S. cities. Nor has the Univision report focused on weapons that have found their way to cartels via the State Department or the Department of Defense.
The Obama administration clearly hoped that the Department of Justice’s Inspector General report on Operation Fast and Furious would be the last word on the scandal. which has been tied to hundreds of deaths in Mexico and the murders of two American law-enforcement officials. However, a new report from Univision to be broadcast tomorrow, previewed here by ABC News, may put the issue back on the front pages. One source called Univision’s findings the “holy grail” that Congressional investigators have been seeking.
…
Additional guns, previously unreported by congressional investigators, found their way into the hands of drug traffickers across Latin America in countries such as, Honduras and Colombia, as well as the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. A person familiar with the recent congressional hearings called Univision’s findings “the holy grail” that Congress had been searching for.
On Univision, 7 pm ET tonight, with English-language subtitles.
PDV Caribe, a unit of Venezuelan state oil giant PDVSA, has a 51 percent stake in Albanisa, founded in Caracas on June 17, 2007, while Nicaraguan state oil firm Petronic holds the remaining 49 percent interest.
Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo vowed on Thursday to stand and fight rather than resign after his opponents launched an impeachment drive over a land eviction in which 17 people died last week.
A House panel voted Wednesday to hold Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt for failing to cooperate with a congressional inquiry into Operation “Fast and Furious” hours after President Obama asserted executive privilege over related documents.
On a party-line vote, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted 23 to 17 to hold Holder in contempt for failing to share documents related to the operation run out of the Phoenix division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives between 2009 and 2011, with the backing of the U.S. attorney in Phoenix. The move makes Holder the first member of Obama’s Cabinet held in contempt by a congressional committee.
ARGENTINA
