Connie Mack Becomes the 30th Congressman to Call for Holder’s Resignation

Attorney General Eric Holder’s service in the Obama administration may be coming to an end. Thirty members of Congress are now calling for Holder’s immediate resignation–a number that grows larger every day.

Florida Republican Rep. Connie Mack became the latest congressman to demand that Holder step down, telling The Daily Caller late on Tuesday that “Eric Holder should resign Fast and Furiously!”

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“Congresswoman Bono Mack is deeply concerned about ‘Fast and Furious’ and certainly a resignation is not out of the question,” her spokesman Cort Bush told TheDC earlier this week.

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The administration’s continued failure to defend Holder suggests that the president may be keeping the door open to pushing Holder out of office to prevent the scandal from seeping into campaign season.

Three presidential candidates–Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney–have made, in one form or another, a call for Holder’s resignation.

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The continued congressional pressure on Holder comes as the Attorney General’s top deputy, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday. At the hearing, ranking Republican member Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa pushed Breuer on his recent claims that he was responsible–at least partially–for not informing Holder that gun walking tactics were used during the Operation Fast and Furious.

Gun-walking is when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allows straw purchasers to take guns across the border without stopping them, even when law enforcement agents have the chance to do so. Straw purchasers are people who can legally purchase weapons in the United States but do so with the known intention of trafficking them into Mexico.

In a late Monday night document dump that appears to have been an attempt to shield Holder from more public pressure, Breuer admitted that he knew gun-walking occurred during Operation Wide Receiver–a Bush administration program from 2006 and 2007 that employed similar, but more subtle tactics.

Grassley pressured Breuer into admitting that a statement in a letter the DOJ sent him on Feb. 4, 2011, was not true. “ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico,” the letter from the DOJ to Grassley said.

After reading it aloud during the hearing, Grassley turned to Breuer and said: “That statement is absolutely false and you admitted as much last night that you knew by April of 2010 that ATF walked guns in Operation Fast and Furious. That’s correct, yes?”

“Yes, senator,” Breuer replied.

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During that same hearing, Breuer and California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein tried to blame what they consider lax gun laws for Operation Fast and Furious’ failures, even though it was the law enforcement agents responsible for enforcing gun laws who were selling guns to Mexican drug cartels. {snip}

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