Liar, liar , pants on fire

Reuters reported it: Attorney General Eric Holder seeks distance from gun sting.

Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday sought to distance himself and other senior Justice Department officials from a botched operation to track guns smuggled to Mexican drug cartels, saying they were not involved.

The Obama administration has been under scrutiny after revelations that as many as 2,000 guns were sold to suspected gun traffickers, not properly tracked and ended up at crime scenes in the United States and Mexico.

The operation, dubbed "Fast and Furious", was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Attorney's office in Arizona. Congressional Republicans have questioned who approved it and whether senior Justice Department officials were involved.

"The notion that somehow or other that this thing reaches into the upper levels of the Justice Department is something that, at this point, I don't think is supported by the facts," Holder told reporters.

Politico reported it too. Eric Holder: I didn’t know about ‘Fast & Furious'

FOX had it.

The head of the U.S. Justice Department launched his strongest personal defense yet in the growing furor over Operation Fast and Furious, the controversial sting targeting Mexican drug cartels and American gunrunners.

John Hayward at Human Events covered it. Holder Defends Himself Against Gun Walker Investigation. The stone wall crumbles.

You can tell Attorney General Eric Holder​ is getting nervous about the Gun Walker investigation, because he’s sounding mighty defensive about it. . .

That’s one of those weird, plausibly deniable denials that signals extreme distress among the Washington herd. “I don’t think the notion is supported by the facts” is a far cry from “I absolutely deny that absurd allegation.” Spinning it as a political witch hunt would work better if Holder hadn’t spent so much time stonewalling the investigation. When House Oversight finally pries something out of him with a subpoena, the pages are so heavily redacted with black marker that they look like supermarket bar codes.

As House Oversight chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) pointed out, Holder’s “Sergeant Schultz​” defense amounts to deflecting accusations of malevolence by claiming incompetence:

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