Cravaack uses Fast and Furious to fundraise

Posted at 1:22 PM on June 26, 2012 by Brett Neely
Filed under: Campaign 2012: U.S. MN CD8, U.S. House

WASHINGTON - The U.S. House will vote on Thursday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for not sharing information about a botched gun-running operation with House investigators. Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Cravaack is using the issue as fodder for a fundraising appeal.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms planned Fast and Furious operation as a sting, intending to ship thousands of guns to Mexican drug dealers with the intent of tracking the weapons and arresting the dealers who moved the guns into the criminal underworld. Instead, the U.S. government lost track of the weapons and at least one was used in the death of American agent Brian Terry.

Although operations like Fast and Furious began under the Bush Administration, Republicans have insisted that Holder and other top Justice Department officials know more about the operation than they are sharing with Congress.

"The best way to hold Holder and the entire Obama Administration responsible is to elect authentic conservatives to Congress," writes Cravaack. "This is why I'm asking for your help to post the best possible fundraising report ahead of Saturday's Federal Election Commission deadline."

Some House Republicans have also claimed that the Fast and Furious operation was a pretext for the Obama Administration to crack down on American gun owners. While not directly subscribing to this theory, Cravaack also called Holder a "radical anti-gun extremist" in an earlier fundraising pitch based off of Fast and Furious.

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