A Fast & Furious fib (8)

It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup, goes the old Washington cliché. In the case of the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal, it’s both.

As Attorney General Eric Holder gets ready to face more congressional grilling Thursday, something’s clearly rotten at the Justice Department. The stench goes all the way to the top — to Holder.

Friday, the feds disclosed documents that show that despite Holder’s claim during congressional testimony that he’d only learned of F&F “a few weeks” earlier (a claim later amended to “a couple of months”), he has known (or should have known) about it all along.

That information came in a series of e-mails in which the former US attorney in Arizona, Dennis Burke, discussed the F&F’s first fatality, agent Brian Terry, with a Holder deputy. The e-mails were sent in the early hours of Dec. 15, 2010, the day Terry died of wounds received the day before in a shootout 18 miles inside the US border, near Nogales.

The deputy, Monty Wilkinson, responded: “Tragic. I’ve alerted the AG.”

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See Also:

Latest Friday night document dump shows Holder was informed of Brian Terry’s murder on day Fast & Furious weapons killed border agent

Afternoon Updates:

12:46 pm EST, January 31st, 2012 — Holder’s fantastical claim about ‘Fast and Furious’

12:53 pm EST, January 31st, 2012 — Eric Holder’s False Testimony Warrants Impeachment

12:57 pm EST, January 31st, 2012 – Dems: Fast & Furious just 1 of 4 misguided probes

1:01 pm EST, January 31st, 2012 – In new ‘Fast and Furious’ report, Democrats clear Justice appointees of wrongdoing

1:04 pm EST, January 31st, 2012: Fatally Flawed: Five Years of Gun-walking in Arizona (Dem Report)

1:06 pm EST, January 31st, 2012 – Justice Department changes inquiry response procedures to Congress after Fast and Furious

1:23 pm EST, January 31st, 2012 — Law-Abiding Mexicans Taking Up Illegal Guns