By Hannity Staff
Photo: Attorney General Eric Holder (Left), President Barack Obama (Right)
The Trump administration announced Wednesday its decision
to release previously unseen documents relating to the “Fast and Furious” gun
scandal that embroiled former Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of
Justice; confirming the records will be disclosed in days.
The sensitive material -which is set to be released to
the House Intelligence Committee- had been previously withheld by Holder and
former President Barack Obama, who used “executive privilege” to conceal the
documents from the American people.
“The Department of Justice under my watch is committed to
transparency and the rule of law. This settlement agreement is an important
step to make sure that the public finally receives all the facts related to
Operation Fast and Furious,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“We need to find out the truth, exactly what happened,
how it happened, why it happened. We need Mr. Trump, President Trump, to unseal
the documents, reverse executive privilege so that we know what happened, and
that we can hold the people accountable that are responsible,” said the brother
of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
Brian
Terry was killed in 2010 by an illegal immigrant with a weapon used in the
botched "gun-walking" program Operation Fast and Furious.
Operation Fast and Furious was a covert mission ran by
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) that allowed Arizona gun
store owners to knowingly sell weapons to members of Mexican drug cartels in
the hopes of tracking the firearms back to Mexico.
Thousands of guns went missing, with some showing up at
crime scenes across the border.
___________________
FLASHBACK
Fast and Furious scandal: Suspected
triggerman in border agent's murder arrested
By William Lajeunesse I FOX News
Photo: Border Patrol Agent Brian
Terry and Special Agent Jaime Zapata from ICE both were killed in 2010 by an illegal immigrant with weapons used in the
botched "gun-walking" program Operation Fast and Furious.
The cartel member suspected of shooting and killing
Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in 2010 with a gun supplied by the U.S.
government was arrested in Mexico Wednesday, senior law enforcement, Border
Patrol, and congressional sources told Fox News.
The suspect, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, was
apprehended by a joint U.S.-Mexico law enforcement task force that included the
Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshals and the Border Patrol Tactical
Unit (BORTAC).
Photo: Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes
A $250,000 reward had been sought for information leading
to the arrest of Osorio-Arellanes, who was captured at a ranch on the border of
the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Chihuahua. U.S. authorities have said they
will seek his extradition.
Terry was killed on Dec. 14, 2010 in a gunfight between
Border Patrol agents and members of a six-man cartel "rip crew,"
which regularly patrolled the desert along the U.S.-Mexico border looking for
drug dealers to rob.
The agent's death exposed Operation Fast and Furious, a
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) operation in which
the federal government allowed criminals to buy guns in Phoenix-area shops with
the intention of tracking them once they made their way into Mexico. But the
agency lost track of more than 1,400 of the 2,000 guns they allowed smugglers
to buy. Two of those guns were found at the scene of Terry's killing.
The operation set off a political firestorm, and
then-Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress after
he refused to divulge documents for a congressional investigation.
Four members of the "rip crew" have already
been sentenced to jail time in the U.S. Manual Osorio-Arellanes was sentenced
to 30 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to first-degree murder in
February 2014.
In October 2015, Ivan Soto-Barraza and Jesus Sanchez-Meza
were convicted by a federal jury of nine different charges, including
first-degree murder and attempted armed robbery.
That same month, Rosario Rafael Burboa-Alvarez, accused
of assembling the "rip crew," was sentenced to 27 years in prison
after striking a plea agreement with prosecutors.
The last remaining member of the "rip
crew," Jesus Rosario Favela-Astorga, is believed to still be at
large.
