House Republicans to Request Special Counsel to Probe Holder
House Republicans to Request Special Counsel to Probe Holder on 'Fast and Furious'
Published October 04, 2011
FILE: Attorney General Eric Holder testifies on Capitol Hill May 3 before a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing.
EXCLUSIVE: House Republicans are going to call for a special counsel to determine whether Attorney General Holder perjured himself during his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious, Fox News has learned.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, is sending a letter to President Obama arguing that Holder cannot investigate himself and will request a probe by a special counsel.
The question is whether Holder committed perjury during a Judiciary Committee hearing in May. At the time, Holder indicated he was not familiar with with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program known as Fast and Furious.
However, a newly discovered memo dated July 2010 shows Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder that straw buyers in the Fast and Furious operation "are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels."
In response to the Monday release of that and other documents, the Justice Department said Holder was confused by the question, and that he was answering about when he first learned of the "troubling tactics" of the program, not the name of it.
But House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., told Fox News on Tuesday morning that Holder saying he didn't understand the question rather than he didn't know of the program is not a successful defense to perjury.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10 ... -fast-and/
Eric Holder and Barack Obama authorized Fast & Furious
RELATED
OPERATION GUNRUNNER Information Collection Point
http://www.alipac.us/ftopic-233906-0-da ... rasc-.html
VIDEO: Obama denying that neither he nor Eric Holder 'authorized' Operation Gunrunner to Univision TV
http://www.alipac.us/ftopicp-1266374.html#1266374
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/obama-d ... to-mexico/
[quote][i]Gun shop owners and whistle-blowing agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) recently announced their concerns with a controversial government program which allows the smuggling of U.S. weapons across the nation’s southern border. In response, the Obama administration is now denying having any knowledge of the operation.
Dubbed “Project Gunrunner,â€