Project Gunrunner: Grassley Threatens to Block Nominees Unless Given Answers

As ranking member of the Senate Judiciary, Chuck Grassley (R-IA) doesn't have the subpoena power Darrell Issa does over in the House. That's the main reason Grassley is running into far more stonewalling when requesting documents that will shed more light on the Project Gunrunner scandal that is responsible for the deaths of two U.S. federal agents - Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata. It appears Grassley is threatening to block Obama's nominees unless he starts getting the answers he's demanding.

Via The Hill:

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is vowing to block President Obama’s nominations until he gets detailed answers on a controversial program that resulted in drug cartels acquiring more than 1,300 firearms from the U.S.

Grassley is pressing the Department of Justice (DOJ) on who initiated the “Gun Runner” program that authorized the sale of guns to people acting as straw purchasers for drug cartels in Mexico. Gun Runner might have contributed to the death of at least one federal agent.

As the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Grassley has been working closely with House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) for the past several months, gathering documents and conducting interviews with DOJ officials and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents in an attempt to find out who gave the order for the operation.

Sources note that unlike Grassley, Issa has subpoena power.

Gun Runner and another operation called Fast and Furious were designed to dismantle the gun-smuggling routes that drug cartels use to ferry high-powered assault rifles from the U.S. into Mexico. By allowing people to illegally purchase large quantities of the weapons from gun dealers, officials hoped to trace the firearms to the drug cartel members and prosecute them. But ATF whistleblowers allege that officials lost track of the guns.

The degree to which Grassley's threats will be effective remains to be seen but it could get very interesting if there's a judge Obama is really chomping at the bit to appoint.

h/t to Sipsey Street