RUSH: There were fireworks yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, in Washington. Darrell Issa’s committee, House Judiciary Committee, they had Eric Holder up, and they’re talking about Fast and Furious. And this is one of the exchanges between Issa and Holder.
ISSA: I want to ask you, first of all, today, have you and your attorneys produced internally the materials responsive to the subpoenas?
HOLDER: We believe that we have responded to the subpoena —
ISSA: No, Mr. Attorney General, you’re not a good witness. A good witness answers the question asked. So let’s go back again. Have you and your attorneys produced internally the materials responsive? In other words, have you taken the time to look up our subpoena and find out what material you have responsive to it or you’ve simply invented a privilege that doesn’t exist?
HOLDER: Well, we’ve produced 7600 —
ISSA: Look, I don’t want to hear about the 7600.
JACKSON LEE: Chairman, I would beg to allow —
ISSA: The lady is out of order. Would the lady please —
JACKSON LEE: Mr. Chairman, parliamentary inquiry.
RUSH: That was Sheila Jackson Lee trying to protect Holder. He’s not being responsive to the subpoena. He’s not giving the committee what they’ve asked for. He’s stonewalling this Fast and Furious thing. And Issa, I have never seen him as loaded for bear as he was. This continued.
ISSA: Isn’t it true, Mr. Attorney General, that you’ve not produced a log of materials withheld even though our investigators have asked for it?
HOLDER: I know that — I’m not sure about that. I know that the —
ISSA: Okay. I’m sure you didn’t.
RUSH: Right. I’m sure you didn’t. And it continued, folks.
ISSA: I appreciate that there was hostility between the attorney general and myself. It was produced by the with fact that I have a great many questions and a relatively little period of time in which to get answers.
HOLDER: Well, I — with all due respect to Chairman Issa, he says there’s hostility between us. I don’t feel that. You know, I understand he’s asking questions, I’m trying to respond as best I can. I’m not feeling hostile at all. I’m pretty calm. I’m okay.
RUSH: Jason Chaffetz then chimes in.
CHAFFETZ: Jason Weinstein sent an e-mail to James Trusty: “Do you think we should try to have Lanny participate in a press when Fast and Furious and Laura’s Tucson case are unsealed? It’s a tricky case, given the number of guns that have walked, but it is a significant set of prosecutions.” James Trusty sends back to Jason Weinstein, “It’s not going to be any big surprise that a bunch of U.S. guns are being used in Mexico. Now, you claim with passion that nobody at the senior levels of the Department of Justice prior to the death of Brian Terry knew that guns were walking, and I’ve got an e-mail from Jason Weinstein using the term “guns walking.”
RUSH: Let me tell you what’s going on here. You know, the purpose of Fast and Furious, one of the purposes was to get those guns across the border in the hands of Mexican drug cartels, have crimes committed, and then say, “We gotta do something about the Second Amendment. How do Americans guns get to Mexico?” Well, we got ’em there because we gave ’em. That was never supposed to be discovered. Now, the Second Amendment argument or rationale here goes to the motive for doing what Holder and the DOJ did. They wanted controversy around guns. They wanted American guns in Mexico, but the problem, they engaged in reckless tactics, and the pretext for allowing the guns to walk across the border was to be able later to trace them to crime scenes and then build a case against the Mexican drug cartels.
All experienced agents who looked at this thought that it was insane because, A, there wouldn’t be crime scenes unless we walk the guns across the border, and used in crimes. So we created the crimes by making the guns available, therefore we’re contributing to violent criminality. And even if you trace the guns to the crime scenes that you create, you wouldn’t cinch the case against these particular cartels because you wouldn’t know for sure enough information to nail ’em. This was a disaster, and now that people are trying to get to the bottom of it the stonewall is taking place. And this was just part of it that you heard, the sound bites from yesterday between Holder and Chaffetz and Darrell Issa.