determining in their analysis of the law that the sales and the transfers were legal. atf did not agree. there is copious evidence that atf agents demanded we want to seize these guns. we want to make these arrests, but prosecutors blocked them. we re a nation of laws. atf agents can under decide that they re going to make arrests or seize guns without prosecutors okay. if they have asked and prosecutors have answered and the answer is no, that s it. is this a prosecutor scandal? were the prosecutors decisions in these cases wild departures from the law? were they making prosecutorial discretion decisions that were wildly incompatible with what had previously bun done or are the gun laws really, really lax. that s a hard time to answer and i spend a lot of time and energy in my reporting trying to determine just that.
bad when they got on with their plan to abolish the second amendment and take away everybody s guns. this has motivated the whole fast and furious attack on eric holder. the vote tomorrow is as far as this thing is ever going to go. there s not going to be a contempt of congress vote that goes against eric holder in the senate, and when the house recommendation knets forwards along so the attorney general can be proskited, it will be this justice department that will decide whether or not to proceed with this. those things aren t going to happen. the apex of the fast and furious thing, the last thing that is going to happen on this politically is tomorrow. and republicans have scheduled that vote for the day everybody knows is going to be supreme court health reform ruling day. they could have scheduled
that s enormous differences in prosecution styles and prosecutorial interpretation of laws in each jurisdiction. now, dave vogt, the group s supervisor of phoenix group seven in his frustration and despair was actually writing in prosecutors in other jurisdictions. they were going as far as new york to see if they could find prosecutors who would take tease cases. and that was described in some congressional testimony by an atf agent named pete forcelli. it s hard to say. i think what you have is a perfect storm of incredibly weak laws in arizona, prosecutors who did not seem particularly eager to enforce the law, and an absolute river of iron onslaught of guns being purchased and pouring across the border. i mean, just to put this in perspective. in arizona where you have 853
has just become of the fast and furious scandal in the howhouse representatives. joining us now is the author of the article the truth about the fast and furious scandal. thank you for being here. thank you for having me. it s a pleasure. you know a lot more about this than i do. i have been covering it for a few days. can you tell me what i got wrong? the only thing you got wrong is i m contributor for fortune, not forbes. and everything you said was absolutely accurate. that s a very humiliating thing to get wrong. i quit, i m sorry. please don t. did agents intentionally walk guns across the border? you tell the story of one instance, one gun, or a handful of guns in that one instance being walked, but that was not part of the fast and furious program. no, and let s set that aside for a moment. in the fast and furious case which was one investigation into a group of straw purchasers, there was no operational tactic by atf to walk guns.
this because republicans realize their conspiracy theory about fast and furious sounds crazy in mixed company. as they have tried to mainstream this thing, they have tried to make it sound like at least some of it could be scandal is not about the conspiracy theory at all. they have tried to create a mainstream impression what this could be about is also the federal government allowing inappropriate gun sales to go through and that itself is scandalous. it s about the government not seizing enough guns from people who are trying to buy guns in this country. if that were really the scandal here, you really think the nra would be all for it? you think the nra would be saying, oh, yeah, this is really important to us, that the federal government crack down and block more gun sales. we insist you vote on that. that would be insane. this whole scandal and this whole vote tomorrow is about the conspiracy theory that president obama purposely wanted there be gun violence so he could steal you