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The day before the Justice Department broadly, and falsely, denied that guns had “walked” as part of the botched “Fast and Furious” gun-smuggling operation, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told supervisors in a memo that he had expressed his concerns about the operation to Congressional investigators. In a July 3 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) questioned whether the memo should have raised red flags at the Justice Department. “The possibility that DOJ was aware of this memorandum on February 3, 2011, and still sent the erroneous letter to Congress...

Some who spoke with my office claim they were “alarmed” by the substance of the memorandum and it caused such a stir that ATF planned to put a panel together to address the allegations but someone within DOJ suppressed the idea. The possibility that DOJ was aware of this memorandum on February 3, 2011, and still sent the erroneous letter to Congress on February 4, 2011, raises more questions about DOJ’s claim that faulty information from Department components inadvertently led to the false letter. This was direct, documented information from street level agents in a far better position to know...

Below is the letter that House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., sent to President Obama on Monday questioning the White House's use of executive privilege over subpoenaed documents related to Operation 'Fast and Furious.' Rep. Darrell Issa's Letter to President Obama

Rep. Darrell Issa threw down the gauntlet to President Obama in a letter to the president that accuses him of being involved in the Fast and Furious operation. The Hill: Issa took issue with Obama's assertion of executive privilege over a cache of documents at the Department of Justice - including a February 2011 letter later withdrawn by the agency - that Issa believes includes information on Holder's role in Fast and Furious. "Either you or your most senior advisers were involved in managing Operation Fast and Furious and the fallout from it, including the false Feb. 4, 2011 letter...

A single internal Department of Justice email could be the smoking-gun document in the Operation Fast and Furious scandal — if it turns out to contain what congressional investigators have said it does. The document would establish that wiretap application documents show senior DOJ officials knew about and approved the gunwalking tactic in Fast and Furious. This is the opposite of what Attorney General Eric Holder and House oversight committee ranking Democratic member Rep. Elijah Cummings have claimed. It appears that email would also prove senior DOJ officials, likely including Holder himself, knew in March 2011 that a Feb. 4, 2011 letter...

---------- snip ---------- THE MONEY QUOTE "Either you or your most senior advisers were involved in managing Operation Fast & Furious and the fallout from it...or, you are asserting a Presidential power that you know to be unjustified solely for the purpose of further obstructing a congressional investigation," Issa wrote. "To date, the White House has steadfastly maintained that it has not had any role in advising the Department with respect to the congressional investigation. The surprising assertion of executive privilege raised the question of whether that is still the case."

Congressman Darrell Issa is leading the investigation into the Fast & Furious ATF scandal and his committee recommended Attorney General Eric Holder for contempt charges, but he admitted to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday today that so far, there is no evidence connecting the scandal directly to the White House and Obama administration. Wallace played a clip of House Speaker John Boehner saying that the invocation of executive privilege is “an admission” of guilt on the part of the White House. Wallace asked Issa directly if “any evidence” currently supports the claim that White House officials were at all...

The Talk Shows June 24th, 2012 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. and Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Issa; Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; former Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M.FACE THE NATION (CBS): Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas; former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn.; Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for President Barack Obama; Eric Fehrnstrom, adviser to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.THIS WEEK (ABC): Issa and Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif.STATE OF THE UNION (CNN): Ed Gillespie, adviser to Romney's campaign; Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.; former...

On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume made the case that there could indeed be evidence that the Department of Justice is involved in a cover-up of operation-turned-scandal Fast and Furious.Hume questioned the Obama administration’s use of executive privilege to withhold documents pertaining to the program.“I think the scent of a cover-up is pretty strong,” Hume said. “The documents are being withheld — I don’t think there is any evidence that this is not executive privilege made because of presidential communications, which is where the strongest privilege lies, are involved here. This...

(CNSNews.com) - Three and a half years before he invoked executive privilege in refusing to hand over to Congress internal Justice Department documents about Operation Fast and Furious--and just eight days before his inauguration--President-elect Barack Obama met with Mexican President Calderon over lunch at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C., and “pledged” that he would take action aimed at stopping the flow of guns into that country from the United States. Public statements from both Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano demonstrate that they were both personally working on this issue from their first month...

Wow! Wow! From a lawyer’s point of view, it’s hard to imagine anything more stupid than for the Obama White House to assert executive privilege as to the Fast and Furious documents. The subpoenaed documents must have some pretty damning information for the White House to make this move. More than that, by having asserted the privilege, the lawyer-led White House showed either a profound misunderstanding of the nature of privilege or is conceding that the Fast and Furious scandal — which saw the Justice Department pour thousands of guns into criminal hands in Mexico, resulting in the murders of...

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WH Comms Dir @pfeiffer44 slams Oversight Cmte for pursuing "a politically-motivated, taxpayer-funded election-year fishing expedition."In written statement, @pfeiffer44 says House GOP should work with Presd Obama "to create more jobs, not more political theater.”

...Butt getting back to the violence in Rahm’s Chicagoland: can you believe it? 7 dead, 35 wounded - just last weekend! I know it has nothing to do with the fact that the Illinois, unlike almost every other state, makes it nearly impossible to own a gun…unless you’re a criminal. Is it any wonder that our Attorney General wants to demonstrate that all those guns coming in from Mexico (or is that the other way around? I get confused) via the Fast and Furious program are reason enough to eliminate that pesky Second Amendment right to bear arms. And Ricky...

President Obama has granted an 11th-hour request by Attorney General Eric Holder to exert executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents, a last-minute maneuver that appears unlikely to head off a contempt vote against Holder by Republicans in the House. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is expected to forge ahead Wednesday morning with its meeting on the contempt resolution anyway. If the vote proceeds, Republicans have more than enough votes on committee to pass the resolution. However, Holder would not be considered held in contempt of Congress unless and until the full House approves the measure.

The White House has asserted executive privilege over documents related to the ‘Fast and Furious’ scandal.