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Here is the text of the address:
Last weekend, my office received a new set of documents from the Justice Department related to my investigation of the ill-advised strategy known as Fast and Furious.
The documents were revealing. Included were several memorandums to Attorney General Holder that reveal the Attorney General was briefed at least five times beginning in July 2010 in written memos about Fast and Furious.
What is concerning to many of us is the fact that the Attorney General told the House Judiciary Committee in May 2011 that he had just learned of Fast and Furious a few weeks before. Yet, on January 31, in a previously scheduled meeting, I personally handed him two letters about Fast and Furious.
Now, to find out he knew some pretty detailed information about the operation back in the summer of 2010, is troubling.
The memo specifically says that the straw buyers, including the target of the investigation, were "responsible for the purchase of 1500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug trafficking cartels." It seems the logical question for the Attorney General, and his staff, after reading the memo would be "why haven't we stopped them?"
In addition, the documents we received show several other people very high up in the Justice Department knew a great deal of information about Fast and Furious, including that guns were being walked.
Congressman Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee who I'm working with, and I will continue working to get to the bottom of this. We want to make sure a stupid program like this never happens again.
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