Obama's Bald-faced Lie on Fast and Furious
No sooner had two mainstream media headlines announced Obama "falsely claimed" Operation Fast and Furious was begun under the Bush administration than the MSM and the White House were ready with the spin.
ABC News and Yahoo got ahead of the backlash from real media types on Friday by running stories on Obama's blatant attack on the truth. When co-hosts Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas pushed Obama for answers on the Fast and Furious scandal during Thursday's now infamous Univision townhall, the President outright lied.
"I think it's important for us to understand that the Fast and Furious program was a field-initiated program begun under the previous administration," the president said. "When Eric Holder found out about it, he discontinued it. We assigned a 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 the people who did initiate this were held accountable."
White House spokesman Eric Schultz was called on to respond to his boss's latest distortion.
The President was referring to the flawed tactic of gun-walking, which despite Republicans efforts to politicize this issue, began under the previous Administration and it was our Attorney General who ended it. In fact, this week's IG report affirms this and if Republicans still have any legitimate questions about Fast and Furious, the 450-page report answers them. In light of this thorough report and Congress's 16 month-long investigation, Republicans have no excuse to keep wasting time and taxpayer resources on politically-motivated, election-year attacks.
ABC and Yahoo reporters both conceded in their articles Operation Fast and Furious was initiated in October 2009 under the Obama administration.
Also, neither outlet mentioned another subtle lie in Obama's statement when he claimed the people "who initiated this were held accountable." Most of the ATF and DOJ personnel implicated in the debacle have either resigned, been reassigned, pled the fifth or are now awaiting action by Holder who "said the job performances of the dozen cited in the report [IG's report] and still employed at the ATF and the Justice Department would be reviewed with the "consideration of potential personnel actions."" Doesn't sound like anybody's been held accountable at all.
As far as gaining traction in the news cycle, nothing happened. The two news media's coverage didn't matter. By Saturday the fact Obama lied was tossed away like yesterday's garbage.
The families of the federal agents who were killed not to mention those of the murdered Mexican citizens deserve the truth but Obama's obedient press corps couldn't care less.
Not one of the Sunday news shows mentioned Obama's Fast and Furious lie; not even George Stephanopoulos' This Week on ABC whose panel included Univision's Jorge Ramos and Ann Coulter. What was the topic on all four shows from Meet the Press to Chris Wallace's Fox News? The May 17 Romney video and the 47%.
Obama's statement that "field agents" initiated Fast and Furious under Bush is so bizarre it borders on sociopathic. How can America abide the disconnect between reality and Obama's mind? He and his sycophantic slaves in the media would have us believe the Attorney General, not to mention the Secretary of State, was kept in the dark about a government program which would potentially result in an international incident and affect our relationship with a sovereign nation.
The recently released DOJ Inspector General's report added to Obama's fairy tale explanation by admitting the White House made it impossible to follow up on leads regarding White House security staffer Kevin O'Reilly, allegedly a key player in Fast and Furious.
Under the Bush administration's Operation Wide Receiver, which was mentioned throughout the DOJ's investigative report, agents attempted to track the weapons into Mexico and had the cooperation of Mexico officials; not so under the Obama administration. Mexico was unaware of Fast and Furious.
The Univision statement is just a pinch of the mind-numbing manure Obama and his agency flunkies are throwing out about Fast and Furious. But it's a whopper. Forget the juvenile propagandists working for Obama, when will conservatives who have access to mainstream media outlets change the subject to murder?
Read more M. Catharine Evans at Potter Williams Report