The Patriot Post® · Obfuscation Reaches Fast and Furious Levels

Since the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in late 2010 showed that Operation Fast and Furious was far worse than completely botched, the Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder has been plotting to cover its tracks and limit the negative political ramifications. The “most transparent administration in history” has been so opaque that several people and groups, including former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson and Judicial Watch, have filed Freedom of Information Act requests for documents regarding the scandal just to get to the bottom of it.

Needless to say, the Holder Justice Department was not forthcoming with these documents. So in September 2012, Judicial Watch filed suit against the Justice Department demanding access. After a long delay, what’s known as a Vaughn index of documents being withheld and the reasons behind their non-disclosure finally appeared after Judge John D. Bates ordered the Obama administration to turn over the list by the end of last week. This particular Vaughn index ran over 1,300 pages and covered more than 15,000 documents – an unbelievably lengthy exemption list.

The overly broad list included correspondence between Holder and his wife Sharon Malone, as well as between him and his mother. In short, almost anything that would be pertinent to either a congressional or criminal investigation was stamped “executive privilege” and hidden. Consider it Eric Holder’s way of flipping us the bird on his way out the door. As Mark Alexander concluded earlier this month, Holder and Barack Obama “have done more damage to our Constitution than any administration in U.S. history.” And since they refuse to turn over documents that may incriminate them further, we may never know just how much destruction they have wrought.

Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch is also frustrated with this turn of events, calling the DOJ Vaughn index a “Nixonian assertion of executive privilege over these ordinary government agency records.” And like Richard Nixon, Holder chose to resign just weeks before being forced to release this basic information.

But overall we really don’t know much more than we did before all the FOIA requests were opened. Getting the truth has been difficult – Holder has already been found in contempt of Congress for not being cooperative. There is little prospect of a reasonable federal investigation before 2017, when Holder and Obama are gone from office. What we do know is that there are dozens and dozens of guns unaccounted for, and they seem to wind up in the hands of those who don’t mind indiscriminately mowing down victims who get in the way.

Indeed, two Americans already paid the ultimate price for nothing more than the Obama/Holder anti-gun agenda.