Fast And Furious Documents Withheld By Holder To Be Released

Former Attorney General Eric Holder takes questions from reporters at the Capitol where he attended the swearing-in of Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2018. Holder says he is "deeply disturbed" that Attorney General Jeff Sessions hasn't spoken out to defend his employees at the Justice Department amid Republican criticism of the FBI. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

While President Obama loves to crow about his supposedly scandal-free administration, a three-word rebuttal sits on the lips of every gun rights activist in the country: Fast. And. Furious.

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Last night, we learned that a number of documents previously withheld by then-Attorney General Eric Holder would be released.

The Department of Justice announced Wednesday additional documents related to the Operation Fast and Furious scandal during the Obama administration will be released to the House Oversight Committee. The documents were previously withheld by Attorney General Eric Holder, who was voted in civil and criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to turn them over. President Obama invoked executive privilege in June 2012 to prevent their release just hours before the contempt vote was held.

“The Department of Justice under my watch is committed to transparency and the rule of law. This settlement agreement is an important step to make sure that the public finally receives all the facts related to Operation Fast and Furious,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions released in a statement.

The Department stated the document release is part of “the conditional settlement agreement, filed in federal court in Washington D.C.” and  “would end six years of litigation arising out of the previous administration’s refusal to produce documents requested by the Committee.”

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This is a welcome development, in part because the entire program was a complete and total trainwreck. It should never have happened.

It certainly didn’t help that President Obama tried to claim that Mexican drug violence was all because of American gun laws. He claimed then that a large number of firearms in Mexico came from the United States, all while his administration was essentially sending guns south of the border that would eventually arm Mexican drug cartels.

These documents represent an important step in not just understanding who did what during Fast and Furious. Perhaps we can finally learn of the scope of the program, one that has been blamed for arming thousands of narco-terrorists.

At the same time, however, was the appearance that the government’s efforts that armed those narco-terrorists were also being used to justify new restrictions on American gun owners. While it may feel a little like tin foil hat territory, it’s been difficult to completely rule out the possibility of the Obama administration launching the program in order to justify new restrictions.

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With these new documents, we may finally get the answers we want. There’s no love lost between the Trump and Obama administrations, after all, so there’s no reason to believe anything will be withheld to avoid embarrassing the previous administration. That is, ultimately, a good thing.

We may finally get some answers, answers we have sorely wanted since news broke about this whole fiasco.

Finally, the family of Border Patrol officer Brian Terry may finally get some long-awaited answers regarding the program that may have ultimately led to arming the man who murdered him.

But his family aren’t the only ones looking for answers. A large chunk of the American public has wanted them as well.

Now, we might finally get them.

 

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