Once again Barack Obama cannot help himself to shifting blame for something that occurred under his administration to George W. Bush. In an interview on Thursday with Spanish-language television network Univision, Obama stated that Operation Fast and Furious began under the Bush administration.
“You told me during an interview that you and Mr. Holder did not authorize the Fast and Furious operation that allowed 2,000 weapons from the United States into Mexico and they were in the drug trafficking [cartels'] hands,” Univision co-host Jorge Ramos asked Obama, according to a translator. “I think that up to 100 Mexicans might have died and also American agent Brian Terry. There’s a report that 14 agents were responsible for the operation but shouldn’t the attorney general, Eric Holder, he should have known about that and if he didn’t, should you fire him?”
“Well, first of all, I think it’s important to understand that the Fast and Furious program was a field-initiated program, begun under the previous administration,” Obama said. “When Eric Holder found out about it, he discontinued it. We assigned an inspector general to do a thorough report that was just issued — confirming that in fact Eric Holder did not know about this, that he took prompt action and that the people who did initiate this were held accountable. But, what I think is most important is recognizing that we’ve got a challenge in terms of weapons flowing south, and the strategy that was pursued out of Arizona, obviously, was completely wrongheaded. Those folks who were responsible have been held accountable. The question now is, how do we move forward with a strategy that will actually work?”
What Barack Obama is actually referring to under the Bush administration was known as Operation Wide Receiver, which was not only run under the Bush administration, but was also shut down under that administration as well. However, Obama tried to make Fast and Furious appear as though it began under Bush. It didn’t, and there are significant differences between the two operations, which I have demonstrated before.
“We are going to have to work with Mexican law enforcement to accomplish this, but I will tell you that Eric Holder has my complete confidence, because he has shown himself to be willing to hold accountable those who took these actions and is passionate about making sure that we’re preventing guns from getting into the wrong hands,” Obama continued.
Ramos then followed up in English “But if you have nothing to hide, then why are you not releasing papers to the…”
Obama cut him off responding, “The truth is we’ve released thousands of papers.”
The truth is that there have been thousands of pages released by the Obama Department of Justice. However, most of them are simply black as they are so heavily redacted, so as to be rendered useless. There are still tens of thousands of documents unreleased by the DOJ.
However, co-host Maria Elena Salinas continued by asking “Let’s have an independent investigation, because at the end of the day, this is the Justice Department investigating its boss and is saying they say is not at fault? Why don’t we have, very briefly, an independent investigation that is not done by the Justice Department?”
“Well, understand that, not only have we had multiple hearings in Congress, but the inspector general is put in place specifically to be independent from the attorney general,” Obama answered. “This attorney general’s [sic] report was not a whitewash in any way. I mean, it was tough on the Justice Department, and it indicated that, potentially, more supervision was needed, people should have known in some cases, even if they didn’t actually know. So, it was, I think, independent, honest, it was a clear assessment of what had gone wrong in that situation.”
“And we are happy to continue to provide the information that is relevant to this, but one of the things that happens in Washington is, very quickly, these issues become political distractions as opposed to us actually solving the problems that we need to solve,” Obama continued. “And, this issue of guns flowing south is a hard issue to solve, because this country respects the Second Amendment, we want to protect the rights of gun owners and those who are seeking to purchase firearms, but oftentimes that’s exploited as well. And so we’ve got to make sure we’re properly balancing the rights of U.S. citizens but making sure that we’re also interdicting those arms that would get into the hands of criminals.”
Barack Obama knows full well that his administration is completely responsible and complicit in Operation Fast and Furious and he will do everything he can to attempt to divert attention away from himself and the administration. He has lied to the American people and shown he is far from transparent in the matter by evoking executive privilege and by keeping White House Security Adviser Kevin O’Reilly from testifying to the Inspector General Michael horowitz. All of this led the IG to declare that is was “impossible” to get any information that was relevant from the White House about the program.
Then Obama goes on Spanish television to repeat the same lies he has given to the American people.
View the interview below:
