President Obama claimed that George W. Bush began for Operation Fast and Furious, in addition to contradicting his inspector general by claiming that he gave Congress “almost all” of the documents pertaining to the gun walking.
“I think it’s important for us to understand that Fast and Furious was a field operation begun under the previous administration,” Obama said when asked if he will fire Attorney General Eric Holder. Operation Fast and Furious began in 2009. The president was conflating Fast and Furious with Operation Wide Receiver, a law enforcement tactic that began in 2006 and ended in 2007 which was substantially different from Fast and Furious (although some guns did go from the United States to Mexico in Wide Receiver).
Speaking more broadly, Obama added that "at any moment in the federal government, there will be people who do dumb things."
“If you have nothing to hide, why will you not release these papers?” one of the Univision moderators asked him. “We’ve released almost all of them,” Obama claimed, saying that the documents withheld were “not related to the Fast and Furious operation.”
The Justice Department inspector general said earlier today that the 140,000 documents Obama’s team refused to give Congress were relevant to the House investigation into Fast and Furious.
“We certainly found they were relevant which is why we insisted on reporting on them,” inspector general Michael Horowitz told House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., when asked to comment on Obama’s refusal to let Congress see those documents.
