by AWR Hawkins To date Barack Obama, the dispenser of hope and change and the presiding officer over the least transparent presidency in history, has claimed he only learned about Fast and Furious earlier this year. However, with each new document dump Obama’s timeframe seems to be as inaccurate (or as purposely misleading) as Attorney General Eric Holder’s.
For example, just months after he took office it was evident he was focused on a Fast and Furious-like operation, ostensibly aimed at cutting down on gun trafficking on the southern border. Thus, on March 24, 2009, Deputy Attorney General David Ogden made the following announcement:
The President has directed us to take action to fight [Mexican] cartels…and Attorney General Holder and I are taking several new and aggressive steps as part of the administration’s comprehensive plan.And the following month, April 2009, he stood beside Mexican President Felipe Calderón and uttered words we now recognize as hypocritical and duplicitous at best:
I continue to believe that we can respect and honor the Second Amendment right in our Constitution — the rights of sportsmen and hunters and homeowners that want to keep their families safe — to lawfully bear arms, while dealing with assault weapons that, as we know here in Mexico, are used to fuel violence.Fast forward one year, and White House logs show that then-Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler met personally with Obama four times between May 7 and May 19, 2010.
Just in case Grindler’s name doesn’t set off sirens in your mind, he had received an in depth briefing on Fast and Furious on March 12, 2010. (This briefing came via an ATF slideshow which I covered in a post for Big Government earlier this year.) During this same briefing, Grindler was provided with details concerning the number of times that a straw purchaser named Uriel Patino had purchased guns during Fast and Furious. (Patino’s total weapon acquisition numbered approx. 720 guns.)
By the way, Grindler is no longer a Deputy Attorney General. Rather, he is Holder’s Chief of Staff.
So what do you figure he and Obama talked about when they met four times in May 2010?
Perhaps a better question is—do you think there’s any way they didn’t talk about Fast and Furious?
Even the LA Times admits Fast and Furious was at its height then, so I really don’t think Obama and Grindler used their meetings to plan Obama’s next vacation. Rather, I think Obama may have known about Fast and Furious nearly a year before he admits.
Looks like it’s time for Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) to broaden his inquiry into this mess.
Big Government
