{"id":2970,"date":"2012-09-20T02:12:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-20T02:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/2012\/09\/20\/grassley-statement-on-oig-repor\/"},"modified":"2019-08-16T18:19:33","modified_gmt":"2019-08-16T18:19:33","slug":"grassley-statement-on-oig-repor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/?p=2970","title":{"rendered":"Grassley Statement On OIG Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:15157,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.grassley.senate.gov\\\/news\\\/Article.cfm?customel_dataPageID_1502=42500&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.grassley.senate.gov\\\/news\\\/Article.cfm?customel_dataPageID_1502=42500&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.grassley.senate.gov\/news\/Article.cfm?customel_dataPageID_1502=42500\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) issued a statement today <\/a>regarding the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General&#8217;s report on Operation Fast and Furious. He notes that much of what was contained in the report had already been reported by Sen. Grassley and Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.<\/p>\n<p>Grassley noted that the wire tap applications still have not been made public nor have much of what was hidden under President Obama&#8217;s claim of executive privilege. Grassley called Obama&#8217;s actions &#8220;merely thumbing his nose&#8221; at Congress.<\/p>\n<p>The full statement is below:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"tr_bq\"><p>\n<i>Senator Chuck Grassley, Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on the<br \/>\n Judiciary, which has jurisdiction over the Justice Department, made the<br \/>\n following comment after the Inspector General for the Justice<br \/>\nDepartment released its long awaited report on Operation Fast and<br \/>\nFurious.&nbsp; Grassley first began investigating alleged gunwalking in<br \/>\nJanuary 2011 after whistleblowers came forward to alert Congress about<br \/>\ngunwalking in Arizona.&nbsp; The Justice Department and Attorney General Eric<br \/>\n Holder initially denied gunwalking occurred.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt first glance, the Inspector General\u2019s report reaffirms virtually<br \/>\neverything that Congressman Issa and I have already reported.&nbsp; Operation<br \/>\n Fast and Furious was the height of irresponsibility on the part of a<br \/>\nnumber of people from the ATF Phoenix field office all the way up to the<br \/>\n Justice Department headquarters.&nbsp; And, we still don\u2019t know the full<br \/>\nextent of any White House involvement because they refused to be<br \/>\ntransparent and provide documents requested by the Inspector General. &nbsp;<\/i><br \/>\n<i><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s clear that both the ATF and the Justice Department failed to<br \/>\nprovide meaningful oversight of Operation Fast and Furious.&nbsp; They<br \/>\nignored warnings from employees, and frankly, failed to do their jobs.&nbsp;<br \/>\nIt took the death of our own Border Patrol Agent, action by a courageous<br \/>\n whistleblower, and intense scrutiny from Congress before they even took<br \/>\n note of what was happening under their own eyes.&nbsp; Even then, they<br \/>\nwouldn\u2019t come clean with how bad it really was until after they had sent<br \/>\n a false letter and retracted it eight months later.<\/i><br \/>\n<i><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s particularly discouraging that this all could have been stopped<br \/>\nearly on if people had just read the wiretap applications.&nbsp; The<br \/>\nInspector General noted that anybody reading those documents should have<br \/>\n seen the red flags. The law requires that certain senior officials<br \/>\nauthorize those applications, and the Inspector General found that they<br \/>\ndid so without reading them.&nbsp; I\u2019m glad that the OIG is joining me and<br \/>\nChairman Issa in urging the Justice Department to move to unseal the<br \/>\nwiretap applications so that the American people can read them and make<br \/>\nup their own minds.<\/i><br \/>\n<i><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe President also appears to be abusing his authority to exert<br \/>\nexecutive privilege.&nbsp; The White House rightly allowed the Inspector<br \/>\nGeneral to make public a small subset of the documents withheld from<br \/>\nCongress under his claim of Executive Privilege, but it continues to<br \/>\nshut out Congress\u2019 access to the rest of the documents.&nbsp; It proves that<br \/>\nthis subset of documents could have been released earlier, and the<br \/>\nPresident was merely thumbing his nose at Congress by claiming Executive<br \/>\n Privilege on the eve of the contempt vote against Attorney General<br \/>\nHolder for withholding the documents.<\/i><br \/>\n<i><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s time to hold people accountable.&nbsp; Attorney General Holder is out of excuses for action.<\/i><br \/>\n<i><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll be reading the report in more detail.&nbsp; We\u2019ve already noticed that<br \/>\n the report contains a factual error that lets Assistant Attorney<br \/>\nGeneral Lanny Breuer off the hook.&nbsp; The report accepts Breuer\u2019s version<br \/>\nof events, claiming that he hadn\u2019t \u201cproposed edits, commented on the<br \/>\ndrafts or otherwise indicated he had read them.\u201d&nbsp; In fact, emails show<br \/>\nthat he received drafts of the February 4 letter and commented on them<br \/>\nbefore it was sent, which he later denied to Congress.&nbsp;<\/i><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p><i><br \/>\n\u201cLast but not least, I hope the report helps answer questions for the<br \/>\nTerry family.&nbsp; They deserve more answers than they\u2019ve received up to<br \/>\nthis point from their government.\u201d<\/i>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) issued a statement today regarding the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General&#8217;s report on&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[749,3063,544],"class_list":["post-2970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chuck-grassley","tag-doj-office-of-inspector-general","tag-project-gunwalker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8358,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970\/revisions\/8358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}