House requests special counsel to investigate Attorney Gen. Eric Holder

Did Attorney General Eric Holder lie under oath about "Fast and Furious"?

That's the question Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) wants answered, and he's requested a special counsel be appointed to determine if the Attorney General perjured himself while giving testimony to the House Judiciary Committee investigating the scandalous operation.

On May 3, Holder told the committee he was not familiar with the operation until April 2011, but newly discovered documents indicate Holder was aware of the program since at least July 2010.

Fox News reports:

However, a newly discovered memo dated July 2010 shows Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder that straw buyers in the Fast and Furious operation "are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels."

Other documents also indicate that Holder began receiving weekly briefings on the program from the National Drug Intelligence Center "beginning, at the latest, on July 5, 2010," Smith wrote.

"These updates mentioned, not only the name of the operation, but also specific details about guns being trafficked to Mexico," Smith wrote in the letter to Obama.

"Allegations that senior Justice Department officials may have intentionally misled members of Congress are extremely troubling and must be addressed by an independent and objective special counsel. I urge you to appoint a special counsel who will investigate these allegations as soon as possible," Smith wrote in a letter to President Obama.

CBS News reported that the Attorney General didn't understand the question that was put to him by Congress:

The Justice Department told CBS News that the officials in those emails were talking about a different case started before Eric Holder became Attorney General. And tonight they tell CBS News, Holder misunderstood that question from the committee - he did know about Fast and Furious - just not the details.

But Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told Fox News Tuesday morning that Holder's excuse is not a successful defense to perjury.

Sen. Charles Grassley said Holder received a letter from him when the Attorney General visited his office on Jan 31.

"If he read my letter, he knew on January 31," Grassley told Fox News. "He probably actually knew about it way back in the middle of last year or earlier."

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air adds:

Allahpundit wrote last night about the pushback at Justice, saying that Holder doesn’t read all of his briefings as a defense to perjury. If that’s true, we’d have to believe that the ATF deliberately sent thousands of guns over the border into the hands of drug cartels and gangs, and Holder was so disinterested in the project that he didn’t bother to pick up even one memo on the subject. Congress might have grounds to impeach him for incompetence on that score alone, if the White House refuses the call for a special prosecutor.

Fast and Furious was an operation designed to purposefully let guns purchased in the United States fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, ostensibly so they could be tracked. Allegedly, thousands of guns "walked" across the border, and many have since turned up at crime scenes in the U.S.

Thanks to the operation, a Border Patrol officer was killed last December, and two of those weapons were found at the murder scene.

CBS News reported in March:

Surveillance video obtained by CBS News shows suspected drug cartel suppliers carrying boxes of weapons to their cars at a Phoenix gun shop. The long boxes shown in the video being loaded in were AK-47-type assault rifles.

So it turns out ATF not only allowed it - they videotaped it.

Documents show the inevitable result: The guns that ATF let go began showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. And as ATF stood by watching thousands of weapons hit the streets... the Fast and Furious group supervisor noted the escalating Mexican violence.

One e-mail noted, "958 killed in March 2010 ... most violent month since 2005." The same e-mail notes: "Our subjects purchased 359 firearms during March alone," including "numerous Barrett .50 caliber rifles."

Dodson feels that ATF was partly to blame for the escalating violence in Mexico and on the border. "I even asked them if they could see the correlation between the two," he said. "The more our guys buy, the more violence we're having down there."

A number of conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh, have claimed the operation was designed to mold public opinion against the Second Amendment, in order to push laws undermining the right to keep and bear arms.

Now, House Republicans are asking: What did Attorney General Eric Holder really know, and when did he know it.

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