Department of Justice Caught Lying over Project Gunrunner

Eric Holder's Justice Department is now on record as lying. In Watergate, it was all about the cover-up more than it was about the crime itself. The same thing is happening with this scandal. Perhaps the biggest difference is that Watergate did not involve murder. It is rather shocking at this point that the DOJ would choose this course in light of all the information Rep. Darrell Issa and Senator Charles Grassley have in their possession. That information includes emails between a gun store owner and a top ATF official named David Voth. The emails leave no doubt that Voth directed that gun store owner to continue selling weapons to straw purchasers.

In a May 2nd letter to Grassley, ranking member of the Senatorial Judiciary committee, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich shockingly reiterated that the ATF did not allow weapons to be purchased by such individuals.

This truly is an amazing development because in addition to both Grassley and Issa having emails in their possession that clearly prove the opposite is indeed the case, their investigators have been in Phoenix - the location where Operation Fast and Furious was based - transcribing interviews with people involved; those people appear to be talking.

On May 3rd, Grassley and Issa sent Eric Holder a letter that included a reference to those interviews.

Via the Daily Caller:

Now, Issa and Grassley are relying as well on the transcribed interviews with key officials in Phoenix, the letter says.

“[T]he [Justice] Department sent a letter Feb. 4, 2011 claiming that the whistleblower allegations were ‘false’ and that ‘ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally in and prevent their transportation to Mexico,’” the letter says.

“When questioned in transcribed interviews last week in Phoenix, agents with first-hand knowledge of ATF operations contradicted the claim,” the letter says.

“In fact according to these witnesses, there was a specific strategy implemented to not “make every effort” but rather to avoid interdicting weapons in hopes of making a larger case against higher-ups in the trafficking organization,” the letter says.

The letter from Weich to Grassley is very significant on another level as well. Since Holder is very much in the loop to what's going on, the denial on the part of Weich that ATF did what we now know it did - put guns in the hands of bad guys - that letter may just as well have come from Holder himself.

HERE is a link to the video of Issa grilling Holder on May 3rd.