Free Republic

The Toyota sudden acceleration debacle may be a thing of the past, but one U.S. Senator thinks the government investigation is worth another look. Sen. Charles E. Grassley claims the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, along with NASA, may have let what he calls a “serious issue” fall through the cracks. In a letter sent to NHSTA administrator David Strickland, Grassley raised questions about the investigation, asking whether vehicles were tested for a very serious defect called “tin whiskers,” reports the Los Angeles Times. Tin whiskers, as described in a NASA report, are “electronically conductive, crystalline structures of tin that...

Article For Immediate Release July 3, 2012 Grassley asks for Justice Department records of field agent memo on Fast and Furious ATF agent describes discussion of operation one day before Justice Department denial WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley today asked Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for information about who at the Department of Justice (DOJ) saw a memo from a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) who was stationed at the Phoenix field division and was knowledgeable about Operation Fast and Furious.  This memo was produced the day before the Department of Justice...

In a letter Tuesday, Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley pressed Attorney General Eric Holder for details about a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives memorandum that indicates his Department of Justice may have tried to cover up the gunwalking tactics that were at the heart of Operation Fast and Furious. Gary Styers, an ATF special agent in the Lubbock, Texas field office, wrote what Grassley described as a “Fast and Furious memorandum” on Feb. 3, 2011. In it, Styers described how two investigators for Grassley’s Senate Judiciary Committee office had contacted him the day before about the Fast and...

House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley are asking the Department of Justice’s internal investigator to hold accountable anyone who retaliated against or threatened to retaliate against Operation Fast and Furious whistleblowers. In a Friday letter to the DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Grassley and Issa said they’re now concerned retaliation is much more likely following Thursday’s votes to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal and civil contempt of Congress. “We just learned that ATF senior management placed two of the main whistleblowers who have testified before Congress about Fast and Furious under...

On Thursday, Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley ripped President Barack Obama for his assertion of the executive privilege to keep hiding Operation Fast and Furious documents from Congress. Grassley said the White House must provide a “privilege log” detailing what documents Obama is exercising his power over, and what his legal argument for doing so is. (Snip) “The attorney general repeatedly claimed that the Justice Department was making an ‘extraordinary offer’ Tuesday night,” Grassley continued. “The only thing extraordinary is that the attorney general offered a promise to produce documents one day and then asked the president to claim executive

Sen. Grassley: DOJ retracts 2d statement made to the Senate Judiciary Committee. .. Sen. Grassley: At hearing last wk, Holder claimed his predecessor Mukasey, had been briefed about gunwalking in Operation Wide Receiver. Sen. Grassley: Now, the Department is retracting that statement and claiming Holder “inadvertently” made that claim to the Committee.

"Botched." That is the word the mainstream media too often associates with the federal gunwalking scandal known as Operation Fast and Furious—but in her new book, Fast and Furious: Barack Obama's Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-Up, investigative reporter Katie Pavlich fearlessly chronicles exactly why the only thing "botched" about the ill-fated operation was the Obama administration's shoddy attempt to cover their tracks. Having shared office space with Katie for well over a year now, I've witnessed her ferocious commitment to this story since before Fast and Furious was even a thought in the national consciousness. I wasn't always quite...

Democrats have hit back at veteran GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley for calling President Barack Obama “stupid” in a weekend Twitter message. “Ive know @ChuckGrassley a long time. I am saddened he would embarrass himself like today with his comments about the President,” Obama's campaign manager, Jim Messina, tweeted. Meanwhile White House senior adviser David Axelrod said, “Heads up, Sen. Grassley. I think a 6-year-old hijacked your account and is sending out foolish Tweets just to embarrass you!” ABC News reported. But the senior senator from Iowa was unrepentant. “In his Tweet on Saturday, Sen. Grassley said that it doesn’t speak...

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) called on Congress to probe the existence of a government operation that allowed hundreds of weapons to enter Mexico under (Wide Receiver), George W. Bush.

FCC fires back at Sen. Grassley over LightSquaredBy Brendan Sasso - 03/08/12 03:40 PM ET The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fired back at Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Thursday after the Republican lawmaker accused the agency of stonewalling his probe over wireless startup LightSquared. On Wednesday, Grassley said the FCC was ignoring his repeated attempts to meet with senior staffers over the agency's decision to grant LightSquared a conditional waiver last year. "Commission staff have attempted to address these issues through multiple conversations with the senator’s staff, including as recently as last week," FCC spokeswoman Tammy Sun said in a...

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today asked the principal behind the LightSquared 4G wireless project to explain a questionable contact to Grassley’s office that intimated benefits for Grassley if he softened his inquiry of government approval of the project. Since last April, Grassley has been reviewing the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of the LightSquared project and the concerns of interference with the Global Positioning System. According to a press release issued from Grassley’s office today, the Senator wrote to Philip Falcone of Harbinger Capital Partners, expressing concern that two separate incidents implied a desire to have Grassley “pull punches” in his...

Calling the president’s illegal non-recess appointments “an escalation in a pattern of contempt for the elected representatives of the American people,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, dismissed a Justice Department memo on Thursday that sought to lend retroactive constitutional weight to the president’s move. Grassley hinted at Senate “action to check and balance” the president’s power grab, though he declined to go into specifics. The DOJ Office of Legal Counsel’s memo, also debunked by Heritage’s Todd Gaziano, claims that pro forma Senate sessions do not preclude the president from unilaterally appointing federal officials. That legal...

New documents obtained from the Justice Department Thursday prove that the administration knew that guns had been walked as part of Operation Wide Receiver, Senator Charles Grassley said in a press release, and then he reiterated his call for Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer to resign. The documents include e-mails and copies of letters sent to Grassley by Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, including a Feb. 4, 2011 letter that insisted that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had never “sanctioned or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them...

Remember the Gerald Walpin affair? Republican Sen. Charles Grassley does. Walpin was the inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the organization that runs the AmeriCorps service program. In June 2009, Walpin received a call from Norman Eisen, who was then the Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform. Eisen told Walpin he had an hour to either resign or be fired. Eisen's call appeared to violate the 2008 Inspectors General Reform Act, which is designed to protect inspectors general from political interference. The Act requires the president to give Congress 30 days'...

Senator Grassley then pointed out that the first whistleblower to come forward about Fast and Furious (ATF Agent John Dodson) had recently been attacked by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). According to Senator Grassley, “Someone in the Justice Department leaked a document to the press along with talking points in an attempt to smear [Dodson.]” The letter insinuated that Dodson went rogue and started a gun-walking operation on his own... Dodson would have been left dangling in these political winds,

On Thursday morning, Attorney General Eric Holder will appear before the House Judiciary Committee and he’s set to get grilled over Operation Fast and Furious. Fast and Furious was a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program overseen by the Justice Department. The operation facilitated the sale of thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels via straw purchasers. Straw purchasers are people who legally purchase guns in the United States with the known intention of illegally trafficking them into Mexico. At least 300 people in Mexico were killed with Fast and Furious weapons, as was U.S. Border Patrol agent...

A Democratic lawmaker said Wednesday on the House floor that Republican legislators around the country are purposefully trying to deny blacks the right to vote by pushing for voter identification laws. “It’s no coincidence that a disproportionate number of these affected voters come from communities of color as well as the poor, the elderly and students,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), a former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. “Having been born and raised in Texas, this certainly looks like a poll tax to me, which those of us remember as a way to prevent African Americans from voting. These

Republican Senator Charles Grassley is closing in on Attorney General Eric Holder in earnest, dissecting his testimony last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a pair of commentaries published today and yesterday on his website, and they are damning. Probably not surprising, since Grassley made it clear in his opening statement to the Judiciary committee last week that he believes the Justice Department has been less than truthful about who knew what and when they knew it. This column detailed his remarks at the time. Yesterday, the Iowa senator zeroed in on Holder’s claim that Congress had voted to...

Senator Charles Grassley late Monday afternoon fired a broadside at Attorney General Eric Holder in the wake of last week’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that left not only Grassley, but others very unhappy with Holder, as this column noted. As this column reported, the Iowa Republican is staying on point with his investigation of Operation Fast and Furious, who is responsible, who knew what and when did they know it? Holder, and his defenders on the committee who have tried to shift public focus away from the gun trafficking scandal and toward their gun control agenda, as this...

Has Julius Genachowski, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), met his match in Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa)? Genachowski, a buddy of President Obama from Harvard Law School, has brought a culture of wheeling and dealing to the FCC, on whose decisions billions of telecom dollars often ride. Grassley says that he will hold up two nominations for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) until the Commission provides documents that he has requested relating to LightSquared, a broadband company owned by the Harbinger Capital hedge fund. LightSquared is at the center of a scandal involving accusations made first by...