More Blood on Their Hands: Univision Finds More Fast and Furious Victims
Univision is keeping the heat on President Obama, performing investigative work that the American media has simply refused to do regarding Fast and Furious.
In a recent interview with the President, a Univision reporter asked why he shouldn’t fire Attorney General Eric Holder. It turns out, the reporter may have been asking based on even further evidence of the operation’s criminal nature.
Yesterday, the Spanish-language television network aired a special that revealed the botched gun-smuggling operation known as Fast and Furious was far more deadly than previously understood.
The documentary revealed that in 2010, a party of nearly 60 teenagers were gunned down by assassins who had been armed by the United States Government. The result – 16 people dead, mostly teenagers.
Indirectly, the United States government played a role in the massacre by supplying some of the firearms used by the cartel murderers. Three of the high caliber weapons fired that night in Villas de Salvarcar were linked to a gun tracing operation run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), according to a Mexican army document obtained exclusively by Univision News.
And it gets worse…
Univision News identified a total of 57 more previously unreported firearms that were bought by straw purchasers monitored by ATF during Operation Fast and Furious, and then recovered in Mexico in sites related to murders, kidnappings, and at least one other massacre.
In fact, the report indicates that other U.S. agents had fallen victim to guns supplied by the U.S. government.
Victor Avila and Jaime Zapata, two U.S. Federal Agents assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, were in the process of transporting surveillance equipment when their vehicle was surrounded by cartel members and shot more than 90 times. Zapata died and Avila was seriously wounded.
An official familiar with the Congressional investigation into Fast and Furious referred to Univision’s report as “the holy grail”. The report also showed that guns were trafficked to other countries as well.
“Univision News’ Investigative Unit was also able to identify additional guns that escaped the control of ATF agents and were used in different types of crimes throughout Mexico,” the network added. “Furthermore, some of these guns — none of which were reported by congressional investigators — were put in the hands of drug traffickers in Honduras, Puerto Rico, and Colombia. A person familiar with the recent congressional hearings called Univision’s findings ‘the holy grail’ that Congress had been searching for.”
Fast and Furious Official Given Extended Paid Leave While Earning Six Figures at Financial Services Company
In what can only be described as a curious arrangement, a senior official at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a man who has been singled out as a top official involved in the gun-running scandal known as Fast and Furious, has been earning paid leave from the bureau while simultaneously drawing an additional six figure salary with a major financial services company.
Bill McMahon was one of five officials named in an indictment that charged him with extensive involvement in the leadership failures of Operation Fast and Furious. The indictment specifically accused McMahon of giving false Congressional testimony. An additional report indicated that McMahon knew there were no safeguards in place to prevent a large number of guns from getting across the border, but he still made no effort to stop it.
Now however, two Republican lawmakers are demanding answers as to how McMahon can remain on paid leave while earning another six-figure salary working full time for the investment bank J.P. Morgan. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) have penned a letter to the Department of Justice asking how such an arrangement could be approved.
“Under any reading of the relevant personnel regulations, it appears that ATF management was under no obligation to approve this sort of arrangement,” wrote Issa and Grassley. “Given McMahon’s outsized role in the Fast and Furious scandal, the decision to approve an extended annual leave arrangement in order to attain pension eligibility and facilitate full-time, outside employment while still collecting a full-time salary at ATF raises a host of questions about both the propriety of the arrangement and the judgment of ATF management.”
The letter continues: “ATF has essentially facilitated McMahon’s early retirement and ability to double dip for nearly half a year by receiving two full-time paychecks—one from the taxpayer and one from the private sector. Moreover, ATF did not wait for the Office of Inspector General to complete its report on Fast and Furious before approving the arrangement. This is in sharp contrast to the posture the agency has taken with whistleblowers like Special Agent John Dodson, who is told he must wait until the Inspector General’s report is complete before the agency will even consider his simple request for a statement retracting the false statements made about him by agency leadership.”
The full text of the letter can be found here…
To this date, nobody has been punished for a botched and possibly illegal gun-smuggling operation that resulted in the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, as well as countless Mexican citizens.
This report simply indicates that the Justice Department not only feels they have nothing to answer to (a mindset facilitated by Eric Holder’s contempt of Congress and the President’s utilization of Executive Privilege), but that they are actually willing to reward those who were directly involved in the operation.
The Justice Department, Eric Holder, and the President continue to dance on the graves of those that their incompetence and corruption killed.
Justice Department Documents Show Holder’s Staff Knew That Border Agent Was Killed With Weapon From Fast and Furious
Holder needs to come clean. And by come clean, I mean apologize to the family of Brian Terry, resign, and wait to be charged with lying under oath.
Daily Caller reports:
A document the Department of Justice sent to Congress Friday shows that Eric Holder’s deputy chief of staff was made aware on the day of U.S. border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder that a weapon traced back to Operation Fast and Furious killed him. But when asked Sunday, a Justice spokesperson would not would not answer The Daily Caller’s question about whether Attorney General Eric Holder himself was informed of the connection on that day.The documents sent from the DOJ to congressional officials Friday night included a series of emails between former Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke and Holder’s then-deputy chief of staff Monty Wilkinson. Those emails show Wilkinson, a senior Holder aide, knew on December 15, 2010 — the day Terry was killed – that the weapons used to murder him were provided to a Mexican gang by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.On that day, records show, Burke wrote to Wilkinson that “[t]he guns found in the desert near the murder[ed] BP officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about – they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store.”The emails also show that Wilkinson “alerted” Holder of Terry’s death on that day. They do not, however, show whether he told Holder that Operation Fast and Furious had provided Terry’s killer with the means to murder him.
Keep reading for more corruption at the Department of Justice…
Mental Recession 