Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) alleged Wednesday that Attorney General Eric Holder’s statements on the controversial Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation are “beginning to look more and more like a cover-up.”
“If the Attorney General is blameless and he said ‘I didn’t know that this thing had gone terribly wrong,’ you would think he would welcome the opportunity to come before Congress and explain it. Instead, I think he’s just hoping to brush this under the rug.”
Documents released Tuesday showed that the attorney general might have been informed about the ATF’s Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation months before he claimed to have first learned about it in testimony before Congress.
“As happens so often in Washington, it’s not the original offense that’s so bad, as it is the cover-up,” noted Cornyn.
In the controversial program, ATF agents sold firearms to known and suspected straw purchasers for Mexican drug cartels, but lost track of many of the weapons. Some of those guns might have contributed to the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.
Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Wednesday characterized Holder’s testimony as full of “inconsistencies” and “untrue.”
