By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com President Barack Obama on Wednesday defended Atty. Gen. Eric Holder Jr. in connection with the scandal surrounding the controversial ATF program “Operation Fast and Furious.” At a press conference, the president said that Holder “would not have ordered” the ATF program that encouraged Arizona gun dealers to sell to straw purchasers —…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The plot thickens. Acting ATF Director Ken Melson has agreed to talk to Senate investigators about Operation Fast and Furious, the ATF program that encouraged gun dealers to sell to straw purchasers so federal agents could trace them to the Mexican cartels , according to The Daily Beast and Newsweek. The…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Replacing Ken Melson, acting head of ATF, could get a little messy. The Los Angeles Times reports that Melson is “strongly resisting pressure” to step down over the controversy surrounding ATF’s “Operation Fast and Furious”, a flawed program that encouraged gun dealers to sell to straw purchasers with the hopes of…
By The Washington Examiner Editorial Page WASHINGTON — Credible media reports have it that Kenneth Melson, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, will get his walking papers this week as a result of his approval of Operation Fast and Furious, aka “Gunwalker.” That’s the program in which ATF purposely allowed…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com One ATF agent told Congressional investigators that someone was going to die from ATF’s controversial gun-walking program dubbed “Operation Fast and Furious”, and he predicted the program would become the subject of a Congressional inquiry. That prediction by agent Larry Alt was noted in a 51-page report released Tuesday Rep. Darrell…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com We’re supposed to learn something from Congressional hearings. I’m not sure we learned all that much on Monday when Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, held a hearing with legal experts to determine what the committee can demand from ATF and the Justice…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — Whether you agree with Atty. General Eric Holder Jr. or not, most reasonable people would conclude that he’s a pretty decent guy and a straight shooter. That being said, it makes his appearance before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday all the more disappointing. I’m referring to his exchange…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — A controversial ATF gun-walking program apparently concerned an Arizona gun dealer, who like many others, had been encouraged by ATF to keep selling weapons to straw purchasers, all with the hopes agents would trace them to the higher levels of the Mexican drug cartels. Problem was some of those…
