Just minutes ago Congressman Darrell Issa, R-California, Chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, issued an announcement of a letter he has sent to Attorney-General Eric Holder demanding that he give the Committee access to Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Morrissey concerning his role in the Operation Fast and Furious scandal.
Issa is investigating the scandal in the U.S. House of Representatives. But for over a year the Attorney-General has stonewalled Issa and U.S. Senator Charles Grassley on information they have requested to advance their investigation into the scandal during which the ATF and its parent, the Department of Justice, deliberately sent thousands of U.S. guns to Mexican drug cartels in order to 'prove' that '90% of the guns used by Mexican criminals come from the United States.'
The letter from Issa states the following:
His (Morrissey's) supervisor, Patrick Cunningham, has stated he will exercise his Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer any questions pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious – such an assertion is extremely rare and suggests possible criminal culpability on the part of a high ranking Justice Department official. Morrissey, who reported directly to Cunningham’s and was intimately involved with Operation Fast and Furious.
“Since August, the Department has identified Patrick Cunningham as the best person in the U.S. Attorney’s Office to provide information about Fast and Furious to the Committee,” Issa said in his letter to Holder. “The Department has refused to make Michael Morrissey and Emory Hurley, both Assistant United States Attorneys supervised by Mr. Cunningham, available to speak with the Committee, citing a policy of not making “line attorneys” available for congressional scrutiny. Mr. Morrissey, however, was Mr. Hurley’s direct supervisor, and an integral part of Fast and Furious. Importantly, both Morrissey and Hurley are unique in their possession of key factual knowledge about Fast and Furious not readily available from any other source.”
The Chairman also reiterated that the Justice Department still has not complied with the subpoenas issued to date, including subpoenaed documents from Cunningham, Morrissey and Hurley.
Cunningham, a key witness in the scandal, has taken the 5th in response to Issa's request for testimony before Congress.
According to David Codrea, National Gun Rights Examiner,
Cunningham is the Chief of the Criminal Division in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona, whose communications were subpoenaed by the Committee, stonewalling on voluntarily answering questions provoked the Committee to issue a subpoena compelling his testimony, and whose attorney then advised the Committee his client intends to exercise his right under the Fifth Amendment "not to be a witness against himself."
Codrea maintains that the refusal of the Justice Department to allow the testimony of 3 key DOJ figures--Cunningham, Morrissey, and another assistant U.S. Attorney in Arizona, Emory Hurley--indicates a top-down directed cover-up of the scandal.
Such a cover-up would not be necessary if the Fast and Furious operation were nothing more than a 'botched sting operation' as Barack Obama has asserted, and simply a 'personnel issue' as acting ATF director B. Todd Jones has stated. Cover-ups involving officials high in the chain of the DOJ are not launched in simple personnel matters revolving around botched sting operations.
Criminal activity has been perpetrated. The question is what and who.
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