Investigations Into BATFE Accelerate (A Crude Chronology Since late March 2011)

[Ed Jewett]

How did Sen. Feinstein get ATF gun trace data in violation of Tiahrt Amendment?

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David Codrea

, Gun Rights Examiner
November 28, 2011





Persons within the Department of Justice whose identities are not yet publicly known apparently broke the law by leaking firearms trace data to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, which she introduced in the Senate Judiciary Committee record in the hearing on Department of Justice oversight earlier this month.
"If I may," Senator Feinstein requested at the beginning of her questioning of Attorney General Eric Holder (see webcast, at the 69:45 mark), I'd like to put in the record the official firearms trace data from the Department of Justice from 12/1/2006 to 2000...excuse me, 9/30/2011...this is guns [unintelligible] Mexico."
Left unchallenged and unsaid is how Feinstein obtained the data, which is prohibited by the Tiahrt Amendment from being shared with anyone but law enforcement agencies and prosecutors, and only then in the course of a criminal investigation. That prohibition extends even to Senator Feinstein, as evidenced by thefailed attempt earlier this year by Rep. Adam Schiff "to allow Congressional committees to be included on the list of entities to which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms can disclose part or all of the contents of the Firearms Trace System database."

While there is no reliable evidence that Sen. Feinstein knew she was improperly disclosing data she had been provided, a Senator so active in promulgating new gun laws not knowing existing ones is the most innocuous explanation if she did not. If that's the case, it strongly implies someone at Justice used the Senator.
Per an anonymous congressional source:

• It was Main Justice, not ATF, who leaked the trace data to Feinstein. I am told ATF "was blindsided" by it.
  
• The trace data did not include any Tiahrt nondisclosure warnings.
  
• The information was leaked to provide selective "statistics" that Feinstein could use to promote her views on gun traffickingno criminal intelligence interpretation was provided, and the way this was done was intentional, with cognizance that the data were going to be misused.
  

Fair questions to follow up with: Who at Main Justice illegally leaked the data to Sen. Feinstein and did she knowingly abet a violation of the law in order to advance her agenda?
And will Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa follow up on this in their investigations?


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