Chronology of News on Operation Fast and Furious

Oct. 22: Fox News: Dept. of Justice faces questions about Grenade maker linked to Mexican murder
In a case that is prompting comparisons to the botched Operation Fast and Furious, police believe explosives found at a murder scene in Mexico may have come from an American bomb-maker whom the U.S. attorney in Arizona refused to prosecute.  According to an internal U.S. Department of Justice memo, a "Kingery grenade" was among the 10 explosives found at the scene of a shootout between police and drug cartels in Guadalajara on Oct. 10 in which three officers were killed.  The "Kingery grenade" refers to those manufactured by Jean Baptiste Kingery, a California resident who made grenades in Mexico from parts sourced in the U.S. He also converted AK-47s from semi- to fully-automatic weapons.

ATF agents arrested Kingery in 2010, but the assistant U.S. attorney in Arizona at the time, Emory Hurley, referred to the grenades as harmless toys and told the ATF the case "lacked jury appeal," according to the ATF supervisor in charge, Pete Forcelli. Forcelli had handled the case until the U.S. attorney declined to prosecute.  Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) compared the situation to Fast and Furious, in which U.S. officials let weapons "walk" across the U.S.-Mexico border; weapons from the program were later found at the murder scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.  "These aren't the only deaths that undoubtedly will come from weapons being allowed to walk and an individual allowed to escape justice for more than 18 months after he was in our hands and released," Issa said.  Kingery continued making some 2,000 bombs for the cartels until Mexican federal police raided his Sonora factory in 2011. Such grenades have been used in cartel attacks in public streets, bars and nightclubs.

Apr. 24: Politico: Judge Skeptical of Obama in Executive Privillege Fight:
A federal judge gave a skeptical reception Wednesday to the Obama administration’s arguments that the courts should stay out of the dispute over the Justice Department’s refusal to turn over some Operation Fast and Furious-related documents to a House committee. Last June, the fight led President Barack Obama to assert executive privilege over the records of the controversial gun trafficking investigation, and to House votes finding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson spent most of an hour-and-a-half hearing Wednesday sharply questioning Deputy Assistant Attorney General Ian Gershengorn about the administration’s assertion that a lawsuit the House panel filed last year should be dismissed and the legislative and executive branches of government left to work out their differences by themselves.Jackson, an Obama appointee, repeatedly suggested that Gershengorn was giving the judiciary short shrift. “You keep talking about the two [branches] as if the third one isn’t there,” she said.

Apr. 9: The House Government Oversight and Reform Committee has posted a pdf document showing which government officials knew about Operation Fast and Furious and the timeline of when they learned about it. We have posted that document on this Website for your information.

Mar. 22: The Hill: ICE Slammed over Fast and Furious by Top House Leaders from both parties:
Top House lawmakers criticized a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Friday for its role in the failed gun tracking operation "Fast and Furious," after a new report detailed the agency’s involvement. At the urging of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), officials with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit did not pursue leads on potential weapons smugglers, according to the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) inspector general report released on Friday.

Mar. 16: FoxNews:
House panel tells judge: Justice's offer in Fast & Furious settlement a 'grave disappointment':
The Justice Department and a congressional committee disagree on the pace of their talks to settle a lawsuit over congressional efforts to get records related to Operation Fast and Furious, a bungled gun-tracking operation. In a joint filing Friday night, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee told the judge in the case that a settlement offer it received from the Justice Department this week was a "grave disappointment" and that a settlement is not possible.

"The parties are very, very far apart," lawyers for the GOP-led committee wrote. "Indeed, they are not even conceptually on the same page. After nearly four months of negotiating in good faith, the committee reluctantly has concluded -- principally as a result of the department's settlement document -- that the attorney general is not serious about settlement." The committee added that it didn't think court-ordered mediation would help.

Jan. 21: FoxNews: [Opinion Piece] The Ship of State Obama is sailing forward Monday on the next leg of its journey amidst battles over guns, immigration, debt and pretty much everything else. The big question is whether the media will continue to serve as crew for another four years. For the first four years it didn’t matter whether it was taxes, Libya, Fast & Furious or gun control (er, “gun violence”), the media have followed Obama like he is their personal master and commander-in-chief.

Jan. 17: ABC News: A Mexican national claims to be the man who shot and killed U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, whose death is tied to the "Fast and Furious" gun-walking scandal. Gustavo Cruz-Lozano, who says he killed Terry, turned himself in on Wednesday on charges related to a separate incident where he threatened to kill Hidalgo County, Texas Sheriff Lupe Treviño.

But before he surrendered himself, Cruz-Lozano said in an exclusive interview with Univision News' daily news magazine show "Primer Impacto" that he murdered Terry during a firefight on Dec. 14, 2010, while the agent was on patrol near the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona. Two AK-47 rifles found at the scene were linked to the botched Operation Fast and Furious in which the U.S. government sought to track firearms sales to violent drug cartels. But it remains unclear whether those weapons were used to kill Terry.

Jan. 15: The Hill: Fast and Furious shows gun control should start with administration: Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Tuesday that if the President Obama wants to impose new restrictions on gun ownership, he should start with his own administration, given how it handled the Fast and Furious gun-walking operation. "We have a president who makes speeches and an attorney general that makes speeches about how they're going to go after illegal gun sales, and yet there is blood on the hands of people in this administration, and we can't even find out who they are," Gohmert said on the House floor Tuesday night.

Jan. 15: The Daily Caller publishes an editorial on Operation Fast and Furious and Gun Control: Let’s get this straight: Guns are too dangerous to be left in the hands of ordinary Americans. But guns in the hands of unknown rebels, who may turn out to be violent extremists, are just fine. There is no evidence of a connection. But what happened in Benghazi seems like a good reason to refrain from encouraging the distribution of weapons without knowing where they will end up or who will start firing them.

Dec. 28: The Washington Times:Chairman Darrell Issa of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee praised the proposed House rules package for the 113th Congress that will keep in place the legal obligations on Attorney General Eric Holder and others at the Department of Justice. This action will keep in place the subpoena that requires the Department of Justice to produce Fast and Furious documents. Attorney General Holder's refusal to turn over these documents is also the basis for the House of Representatives Contempt of Congress civil suit.

Dec. 20: The Los Angeles Times: Two of the weapons found after a drug cartel gunfight last month in Sinaloa, Mexico, that killed five people have been traced back to the U.S. — one lost during the ATF's Operation Fast and Furious, the other originally purchased by a supervisory ATF agent who helped oversee the botched gun-tracking operation.

Dec. 19 Fox News: How did a gun belonging to a former assistant special agent in charge at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives end up at a crime scene in Mexico where five died, including a Mexican beauty queen?

Nov. 27: Business Week: Justice Department is seeking a settlement of the Contempt of Congress Citation against Holder as it negotiates with House Republicans.

Nov. 2: Breitbart.com: Report: Operation Fast and Furious was part of a DOJ "deliberate strategy"

Oct. 29: The Daily Caller: Congressional Fast and furious report places blame on high ranking Just Department officials.

Oct. 25: Politico: Judge Speeds Contempt Lawsuit over Operation Fast and Furious

Oct. 2: FrontPageMag.com: Operation Fast and Furious and the Massacre of Mexican Children

Oct. 1: FoxNews: Finally, the media is showing the staggering human cost of Operation Fast & Furious. But the news broadcast wasn’t in English

Oct. 1: The Blaze: Five things you did not know about Operation Fast and Furious [be warned this has graphic images]

Sept. 22: Daily Caller: Atlantic Columnist, '60 Minutes' Analyst: IG Report Proves Eric Holder Must Resign over Fast and Furious.

Sept. 19: Fox News: Representative Issa interviewed by Fox News about the DOJ Inspector General's report on Fast and Furious. Said report faults Justice for bad judgment and management.

Sept. 19: Washington Post: Republicans hail DOJ Inspector General's report as a huge step forward.

Sept. 18: Fox News: Tax exempt Media Matters closely involved with Holder's Justice Department to "spin" stories on Fast and Furious, the Daily Caller reports. Sixty nine pages of email reveal released by the Department of Justice under a Freedom of Information Act request sheds light on the connection between DOJ and the taxpayer funded Media Matters.

Sept. 18: Terra.com: Relatives of a U.S. Border Patrol agent whose murder in the line of duty was linked to a botched U.S. operation to track guns smuggled to Mexico on Monday called for accountability for the government officials who approved the program

Sept. 11: FoxNews: Long awaited Inspector Generals report is expected to blame ATF and the Justice Department for the botched Fast and Furious operation