House Republicans Call for 'Fast and Furious' Special Counsel

At issue, the Department of Justice’s apparent lies. One, they insist that they never let any guns walk, but a chart has turned up in Friday’s docu-dump showing that they did in fact let lots of guns walk. And two, Attorney General Eric Holder may have lied under oath about when he knew of the program.

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House Republicans are calling for a special counsel to determine whether Attorney General Eric Holder perjured himself during his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious, Fox Newshas learned.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, was sending a letter to President Obama on Tuesday arguing that Holder cannot investigate himself, and requesting the president instruct the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel.

The question is whether Holder committed perjury during a Judiciary Committee hearing on May 3. At the time, Holder indicated he was not familiar with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program known as Fast and Furious until about April 2011.

“I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks,” Holder testified.

However, a newly discovered memo dated July 2010 shows Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder that straw buyers in the Fast and Furious operation “are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels.”

Other documents also indicate that Holder began receiving weekly briefings on the program from the National Drug Intelligence Center “beginning, at the latest, on July 5, 2010,” Smith wrote.

“These updates mentioned, not only the name of the operation, but also specific details about guns being trafficked to Mexico,” Smith wrote in the letter to Obama.

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To say that Fast and Furious has the White House worried would be an understatement. On the Laura Ingraham Show (disclosure: I used to produce that show), CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson says that WH and DoJ officials have yelled at her over her Fast and Furious inquiries. And, they tried using some media groupthink pressure on her.

7:33 – Laura: Do we know the exact number [of guns] that went over to Mexico?
Attkisson: We know more than 2,000 in Fast and Furious and I will soon be reporting on the fact that that is not the only case. 2,000 for that operation according to the agents involved.

8:28 – …It is sort of a drip, drip. And I’m certainly not the one to make the case for DOJ and White House about what I’m doing wrong. They will tell you that I’m the only reporter–as they told me–that is not reasonable. They say the Washington Post is reasonable, the LA Times is reasonable, the New York Times is reasonable, I’m the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I’m unfair and biased by pursuing it.

It’s interesting, which outlets the WH called up for back-up there. The Post smeared Rick Perry this week. The Times has become the Paper of Ill Repute, and the LA Times is so tilted to the left that Patterico has made a blogging career of lampooning it.

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Here’s the chart of guns that the administration says it didn’t allow to walk to Mexico.

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