Free Republic

If not for Ian Garland’s appeal, he would still be sitting in prison. In what appears to be a gross injustice, Garland, who ran a gun shop near El Paso, Texas, was encouraged by ATF officials to sell weapons to “straw purchasers during the failed Operation Fast and Furious,” and then was arrested and thrown in prison for doing what he was told to do by the government.Thankfully, a federal judge released Garland earlier this month, over the objections of federal prosecutors.Ian Garland was arrested, along with the town’s mayor, Eddie Espinoza, former Columbus Police Chief Angelo Vega, and former village trustee Blas “Woody” Gutierrez, and...

Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) has introduced an Articles of Impeachment resolution against Attorney General Eric Holder for his role in Operation Fast and Furious and other scandals of President Barack Obama’s administration. Seven congressman have signed onto the resolution thus far in addition to Olson. They are Reps. Larry Bucshon (R-IN), Blake Farenthold (R-TX), Phil Roe (R-TN), Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), Roger Williams (R-TX), Ted Yoho (R-FL), and Randy Weber (R-TX). The Articles of Impeachment has four different sections. The first calls for Holder’s official removal because of his failure to comply with congressional subpoenas relating to Operation Fast and Furious....

A Texas Republican plans to introduce a resolution of Articles of Impeachment for Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday. Rep. Pete Olson’s (R-Texas) office said this morning that “this was not a decision made lightly,” but comes with Holder’s “pattern of disregard for the rule of law and refusal to be forthright with Congress and the American people” since being held in contempt in June 2012. That 255-67 vote on criminal contempt, which included 17 Democrats, was tied to the Fast and Furious scandal and marked the first time Congress has found an attorney general in contempt. A measure of...

A rump group of House Republicans are tired of waiting for answers from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. — they want him impeached and will formally introduce their charges Thursday. As Roll Call previously reported, a small group of GOP lawmakers have been drafting articles of impeachment for Holder over a string of controversies, including a Department of Justice refusal to turn over documents related to Operation Fast and Furious, a refusal to uphold certain laws — namely the Defense of Marriage Act, the Controlled Substances Act and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 — and a refusal to...

<p>Attorney General Eric Holder wants to appeal a recent judge’s ruling that allows the House to continue with its contempt case, related to Holder’s refusal to turn over documents concerning the Justice Department’s failed Operation Fast and Furious gun-tracking program.</p>

In case you missed it over the weekend, late Friday night Attorney General Eric Holder issued a motion to appeal after U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled in September she will not dismiss contempt and executive privilege lawsuits against the Justice Department. Department of Justice attorneys argued the lawsuits should be dismissed on grounds the judiciary has no business getting in-between Executive branch and Legislative branch disputes. Jackson disagreed with their argument, saying the judiciary has an obligation to look at these kinds of disputes. Holder was hoping to get the case in front of the U.S....

<p>In September 2009, John Dodson, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was assigned to the ATF’s Phoenix office. What he found there shocked him. The bureau was encouraging gun dealers to sell weapons in bulk to known straw buyers, who would funnel those guns to Mexican drug cartels. Known as Operation Fast and Furious, it ended with the death of at least one American law enforcement officer. Dodson became a congressional whistleblower, and the investigation into the operation is ongoing. In this exclusive excerpt from his new book, “The Unarmed Truth,” Dodson explains how tragically inept Fast and Furious was.</p>

Sharyl Attkisson touted 'Fast and Furious' whistleblower John Dodson as "a rare example, especially amid the Obama administration's war on leaks" during a segment on Monday's CBS This Morning. Attkisson, whose reporting on the arms trafficking scandal won CBS a Edward R. Murrow Award, spotlighted the ATF senior agent's new book on "the inside story of why he went public to expose the government's false denials about its gunwalking secrets." The correspondent also pointed out how "there's still a court battle over the 'Fast and Furious' documents that President Obama is withholding from Congress under executive privilege". She also featured...

House lawyers late Monday filed court papers asking a federal judge to force the Justice Department to turn over records to reveal the extent of efforts to stonewall a congressional probe into a botched weapons investigation known as Fast and Furious. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee wants the records to wrap up its probe, which has shifted from the bungled gun-walking operation to “an apparent effort, over a period of many months, by high level DOJ officials” to hinder the investigation, lawyers argued in a court pleading filed Tuesday night in federal court in Washington. The request marks...

John Dodson, the ATF agent who blew the whistle on the the Justice Department’s blood-soaked gun-trafficking operation known as Fast and Furious, told the Arizona Republic in an interview, Thursday, that the FBI played a key role in events leading to the 2010 murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. His comments to the paper, augment what he wrote in his new book, The Unarmed Truth - My Fight to Blow the Whistle and Expose Fast and Furious. Dodson claims that the bandits who killed Terry were working for FBI operatives and were tipped by the DEA to be...

Expressing dismay at an increase in Equal Employment Opportunity complaints under the administration of recently confirmed permanent Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director B. Todd Jones, a moderator at CleanUpATF blasted the agency Thursday by citing Department of Justice statistics, also released yesterday. Longtime readers of this column recall CUATF is a website run by disaffected ATF agents dedicated to exposing Bureau waste, abuse, corruption and fraud. It was from their forum that this correspondent and citizen journalist Mike Vanderboegh of the Sipsey Street Irregulars blog first got wind of allegations that ATF was facilitating “gunwalking” into Mexico...

Presented in a Federal Judge’s court ruling is an insight we have never seen in Federal Courts. It seems very prominent that Obama’s partnership with drug cartels go way beyond the weapons we knew about! A federal court in Texas has issued a formal opinion on the court case United States of America v. Mirtha Veronica Nava-Martinez. The judge, Andrew Hanen, presented his opinion from the case that threw open the doors to watch the travesty of justice that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the shear lawlessness of the Obama Administration. This goes way beyond the Fast and...

Border: A federal judge finds that the Department of Homeland Security, instead of arresting cartel members and the clients who pay them to smuggle children into the U.S., helps the drug lords complete the transactions. Former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano once proclaimed the U.S. border to be as secure as it has ever been. Yet her department has been found by Judge Andrew S. Hanen of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Texas to have actively undermined that security by enabling drug cartels engaged in the lucrative smuggling of children. The case before Judge Hanen — United...

Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security Committee have decided to push ahead with confirmation of President Obama’s nominee for the No. 2 job at the Department of Homeland Security amid objections from Republicans. GOP members on the panel see the move as an effort by Democrats to rush the approval of a controversial nominee by taking advantage of new Senate rules. Last month, the Senate adopted procedures that allow confirmation of presidential nominees by a majority vote instead of the 60 votes required in the past... Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.), the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, called the...

A federal judge in Texas is accusing the Department of Homeland Security of hand-delivering children smuggled into the United States to their illegal immigrant parents. U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen revealed the practice in a blistering court order filed late last week. He said the "dangerous" practice is effectively aiding human traffickers and particularly the drug cartels, which run many of these operations. "These actions are both dangerous and unconscionable," he wrote. The judge attempted to lift the curtain on what is happening behind the scenes of the Obama administration's changing approach to immigration enforcement. It has been well-documented...

A federal judge in Texas late last week accused the Obama administration of aiding drug cartels, saying that instead of enforcing immigration laws, agents knowingly helped smuggle an illegal immigrant girl into the U.S. to live with her mother, also an illegal immigrant, in Virginia. In a 10-page order, Judge Andrew S. Hanen said the case was the fourth such case he’s seen over the last month, and in each instance Border Patrol agents have helped to locate and deliver the children to their illegal immigrant parents. The judge said in each case, the taxpayers footed the bill for flights...

Dirty Harry Reid sabotaged the filibuster, and now the Democrats are running wild in Washington. Mark my words: We all will pay a price. Thanks to Reid's crony-coddling rule change, unqualified stooges will manage the Obama Department of Homeland Security. It's a bundler's world, and we're just living in it. God help us. On Monday night, Senate Democrats voted 57-37 to end debate on the nomination of Jeh Johnson to head DHS. That's three votes short of the traditional 60-vote filibuster threshold that Reid nuked last month. Johnson went on to win his appointment by a 78-16 margin. The White...

Soon, the Senate will be voting on the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas to be the number-two official at DHS. This nomination needs to be opposed because he had a "get to yes" philosophy at USCIS that has led to increased fraud and endangered national security and because he is being investigated by the Office of the Inspector General for pressuring adjudicators to approve flagged EB-5 applicants with political connections. Mayorkas is a political appointee who simply cannot be trusted with an important and influential job at DHS. Please call your U.S. Senators and urge them to vote against cloture when...

The chief watchdog for the Department of Homeland Security has stepped down from his post under a gathering cloud of allegations about his own conduct, just days before he was set to testify before the Senate.-SNIP- The litany of allegations against Edwards included claims that he bowed to political pressure and watered down his reports; abused agency personnel and resources; and retaliated against employees who questioned his conduct. The allegations gained widespread attention after a Democratic and Republican senator sent a bombshell letter to Edwards in June cataloguing the alleged offenses.-SNIP-Further, the letter aired allegations that he violated "anti-nepotism laws"...

The Obama administration overruled career Homeland Security officials and expedited visa applications for about two dozen foreign investors for a politically connected Las Vegas casino hotel after repeated pressure from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his staff, according to internal government documents obtained by The Washington Times. The move to overturn what is normally a non-appealable visa decision came despite concerns about “suspicious financial activity” involving some of the visa applicants from Asia, and it ultimately benefited several companies whose executives have donated heavily in recent years to Democrats, the documents show. It also ensnared Mr. Obama’s current nominee...