Political ramifications of 'Fast and Furious'
Will the ATF gunwalking scandal hurt President Obama's re-election chances?
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," April 16, 2012. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
Watch "The O'Reilly Factor" weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET!
O'REILLY: "Factor Follow up" segment tonight will the "Fast and Furious" gun scandal hurt President Obama's re-election chances? As you may know, the Justice Department investigating a federal program that sent automatic weapons to Mexico in an attempt to find out who was buying down there.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Fire Arms have lost control of some the weapons and one of them killed a border patrol agent in Arizona.
Joining us now is Katie Pavlich author of the new book just out today "Fast and Furious: Barack Obama's Bloodiest Scandal and its Shameless Cover-up". Quite a subtitle there?
KATIE PAVLICH, AUTHOR, "FAST AND FURIOUS": Well, it's factual.
O'REILLY: It may be factual, Ms. Pavlich but it has not gotten traction. This story has not hurt President Obama as much as talk radio and some conservative pundits are yelling and screaming and you and your book -- not there and I want to know why. Why aren't people responding to this?
PAVLICH: First of all, people don't know about the details. He is being protected by the mainstream old media on this because they know that if the American people knew about the details of this program and what they did to push a political agenda that it would definitely swipe a second term from Obama.
O'REILLY: All right, let's walk through this very specifically. So who's they? Who hatched this thing?
PAVLICH: NBC has failed to.
O'REILLY: No, no, not in the media.
PAVLICH: The media ok.
O'REILLY: Who is they? Who hatched "Fast and Furious".
PAVLICH: The Justice Department, ATF, officials from the Justice Department, the highest levels, the assistant attorney general --
O'REILLY: Holder.
PAVLICH: Eric Holder.
O'REILLY: Do you think Holder knew in the beginning that before these guns went south of the border that they were heading there.
PAVLICH: Absolutely. In my book (inaudible) that one of the main priorities of the Obama administration in the beginning was to stop trafficking guns a direct -- as a direct order from the President to make sure that guns weren't being trafficked into Mexico. Top priority.
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: Ok stop the guns from going from the USA to Mexico because the Mexicans were screaming about that.
PAVLICH: Right, they were screaming about it.
O'REILLY: All right, so that makes sense. So you say then that Eric Holder, Attorney General knew about this sting but he denied it under oath in front of Congress, correct?
PAVLICH: Not only has he denied it under oath in front of Congress, he has changed his testimony under oath in front of Congress.
O'REILLY: So that's perjury if true. How can you prove, you, the author of this book, that he did know from the conception that these guns were going down there? How you can prove it?
PAVLICH: Look we have -- Eric Holder in his first testimony in front of Congress about "Fast and Furious" May 2nd, 2011 claimed he knew about it for a couple of weeks. Back pedaled find out -- we find out that we have memos in the book addressed directly to Eric Holder a year, five of them dated July 2010, August 2010.
O'REILLY: Ok but then a second appearance he said yes, yes, yes now I remember but I didn't remember then. But you're saying from the jump before even guns went down he knew. And he certainly denies that.
So why aren't the Congress, the Republicans in Congress and the Senate, why aren't they bringing him up against charges? Why aren't they doing that?
PAVLICH: Well, I think it's time. Chairman Issa has done a very good job of doing the best he can with the Justice Department. They've stonewalled and they have been acting guilty since day one. They haven't been providing any documents as people know.
And in the book we document and show all the connections between Eric Holder, Barack Obama and going back into the Clinton era and what their political agenda behind this whole thing was.
O'REILLY: The political agenda, again, being stopping guns from going into Mexico because the Mexican government. No what is the political agenda?
PAVLICH: No their political agenda behind this entire thing was to blame American gun shops for cartel violence in America in order to push an anti-second amendment, more regulations on these gun shops.
O'REILLY: So it gets a little bit more complicated. You're into the conspiracy thing now not just the hardware thing about it that this was a designed thing to blame gun shops and try to get Second Amendment Rights curtailed.
PAVLICH: Well it's not -- it's not a conspiracy. It's the facts. We have e-mails in the book, documentations showing.
O'REILLY: And who is behind that conspiracy or that plan? Who is behind that?
PAVLICH: The Justice Department.
O'REILLY: But give me a name? I mean, who is running this operation.
PAVLICH: Look, we document in the book the anti-Second Amendment records of Eric Holder, Barack Obama going all the way back to the Clinton administration. The main players in "Fast and Furious". Dennis Burke former U.S. Attorney in Arizona helped craft the Clinton assault rifle ban with Rahm Emanuel.
Now, you fast forward that into the year 2010 and the Gun Control Legislation at an all-time low for approval in America. People don't want it. So, in this administration, what they do, they go around Congress and against the American people and what they want to get their political agenda through and what they did, in this program, is they blamed the gun shops, didn't track the guns into Mexico.
The goal from the beginning was never to track these guns to act like they kind of lost track of them. Like it was a botched operation; it's false. They never had any plans to track these guns.
O'REILLY: So we're going to send them down there hoping that a border patrol agent would be murdered so that there would be anti-Second Amendment movement?
PAVLICH: No. But the goal from the beginning was get these guns, force these gun shops in Arizona to sell to these shop purchasers that have been under surveillance. They knew they were bad guys, they knew they were working for the cartels for a year.
O'REILLY: Right.
PAVLICH: And then, don't track the guns. They didn't put any tracking devices on the guns. Out of 2,500 guns, Bill, two guns had GPS devices put on them.
So you tell me if that shows they wanted to really track these guns?
O'REILLY: All right, so you see nefariousness from the jump on this. Is it going to come out? Do you believe it will come out? Or --
(CROSSTALK)
PAVLICH: I think that we have a lot of evidence in our book to show it. We have the connections between all the political appointees. Why there is a cover up, the loyalties between them going back to the Clinton administration.
The connection between the Second Amendment being attacked because they were prove -- trying to prove that guns from America were going into Mexico.
O'REILLY: All right, all right. Provocative, Ms. Pavlich, thank you. The book is "Fast and Furious." Thanks for coming on and we appreciate it.
PAVLICH: Thank you so much.
Content and Programming Copyright 2012 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2012 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox