A Fast & Furious Flashback [John E.]

Back on July 8th of this year, Kirsten Powers appeared on Special Report with Bret Baier and blindly defended the Administration's position on Fast & Furious. The interview struck me because I was surprised how cavalierly Powers admitted she was simply parroting what the Administration told her and she didn't seem to have any interest in learning anything beyond that. I made a mental note to revisit it when Fast & Furious gained a little more media attention.

First, some background. On June 21st, the Washington Post ran this story (I'll explain why the link sends you to HuffPo shortly).

At the briefing last year, bureau officials laid out for Issa and other members of Congress from both parties details of several ATF investigations, including Fast and Furious, the sources said. For that program, the briefing covered how many guns had been bought by “straw purchasers,’’ the types of guns and how much money had been spent, said one source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the briefing was not public. “All of the things [Issa] has been screaming about, he was briefed on,’’ said one source familiar with the session.

On June 23rd, Issa's office responded by denying that F&F ever came up at a briefing, criticizing the use of anonymous sources in the WaPo story and revealing that the Department of Justice had been pushing the story to multiple media outlets. The Washington Post was the only news organization at that point to publish the story and they ultimately were forced to issue a correction (which is why I linked to HuffPo).

A Wednesday Washington Post story used anonymous Justice Department sources to bash Issa’s investigation into Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious.

The anonymous sources claimed that Issa attended a classified April 2010 briefing for members of Congress and their staffers about the programs that have allowed American guns into Mexican drug cartels’ hands.

Issa spokesman Frederick Hill told The Daily Caller the Post is the first newspaper to run these DOJ claims, but not the first one the Justice Department went to with them.

“We have had people who have contacted us before the Washington Post,” Hill said. “They told us people in the Justice Department were trying to push this story and I think a number of publications didn’t think it was credible or, for whatever reason, decided not to run it.”

Hill said there was a briefing that Issa attended back in April 2010 on a similar subject. “There were questions at the time about the number of U.S. weapons that were ending up at Mexican crime scenes,” he said. “Basically, [it was about] the efforts of the ATF to stop cartels from doing this.”

Did gun walking or Operation Fast and Furious come up at that briefing at all? Hill says “they certainly did not.”

Now, fast forward to July 8th and watch how painfully uninformed Kirsten Powers is, how easily she pushes the (already discredited and corrected) DoJ/Administration position published in the Washington Post attacking Darrell Issa and how readily she admits that she's just repeating what the White House told her. She begins at 1:48, and it's not pretty. Video below the fold.

None of this is new, of course. But, it's helpful to remember just how far this Administration, DoJ and media will go to protect Obama and Holder from this story and also how coordinated it all is. Ben Domenech tells me that Powers is usually pretty good about answering questions on Twitter, so I gave that a shot. No response yet.

I guess what I'm saying is - BREAKING: IT MAY BE POSSIBLE THAT THERE IS SOME LEVEL OF CORRUPTION AT THE OBAMA WHITE HOUSE.

Related: Eric Holder lashes out at Republicans yesterday.

posted by Guest Blogger at 12:28 PM

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