House Speaker John Boehner tells Newsmax that Congress will “get to the bottom” of the unfolding Fast and Furious scandal following new revelations about Attorney General Eric Holder’s involvement in the case.
Documents obtained by CBS News show that Holder was briefed on the operation as early as July 2010.
That contradicts what Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing in May — that he had just learned about the scheme in which agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) allowed suspected gun smugglers to buy 1,400 assault weapons, even though they knew the weapons were likely to end up in the hands of violent Mexican drug cartels.
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, Boehner was asked about the controversy.
“Members of the House Judiciary Committee are going to get to the bottom of this,” he declared.
“This program has raised an awful lot of eyebrows. There are a lot of questions that are unanswered and this latest revelation about when the attorney general knew what he knew, had been briefed on it, raises even more questions.
“So I am hopeful that my colleagues that serve on this committee will stay on it, and frankly I have no doubt that they’ll get to the bottom of this program that has caused so much chaos.”
Rep. Darrell Isa, a California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, has called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to delve into the Fast and Furious case.
Asked whether he has spoken with Issa, Boehner responded: “I have spoken with my chairman, and I’m confident they’ll stay on it.”
ATF officials believed they could trace the guns and that they would lead them to the drug lords. But most of the weapons were used in crimes, including the murders of American agents Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata, as well as in hundreds of incidents south of the border.
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