Fast and Furious Scandal: House Committee to Subpoena Eric Holder

The anti-gunrunning Fast and Furious operation didn’t go as planned. The House Committee has already sent a subpoena to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and now congressional investigators intend to send a subpoena to Attorney General Eric Holder as the Fast and Furious scandal continues.

The Washington Post reports that the goal of the Fast and Furious operation was to trace thousands of weapons as they were illegally transported to Mexican drug cartels. But the ATF wasn’t able to keep track of all the guns and some were found at crime scenes in both the US and Mexico. Authorities believe that a gun from the failed operation was used to kill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.

The House Oversight Committee, led by Republican Darrell Issa, could send the subpoena to Holder as early as this afternoon, according to CBS, and will demand that the Attorney General turn over documents showing when he was made aware of the Fast and Furious operation.

Holder testified in May that he had only recently been made aware of the operation, but the House Oversight Committee believes that Holder had talked to more than a dozen officials about the operation as early as September 2010. The subpoena will demand that Holder show all correspondence he has had about the operation.

Last week Holder acknowledged that memos were sent to and from his office, but said that he never read them. Holder says that the memos were read by others, who decided not to tell him about the Fast and Furious operation. Holder insists that he did not know about the controversial tactic of “letting guns walk” until it was too late.

Do you believe Eric Holder? Or is the Attorney General just trying to keep his hands clean in the Fast and Furious scandal?