DOJ SHOT Show Cases ‘Falling Apart’- Breuer Drops Prosecution

SHOT Show
SHOT Show

USA –-(Ammoland.com)- “[T]he Justice Department’s cases have, well, fallen apart, primarily because justice department prosecutors were repeatedly unable to prove to juries that what the defendants had done was illegal,” The Outdoor Wire is reporting today.

The cases they’re referring to resulted from the SHOT Show sting, a story Gun Rights Examiner reported in a January 2010 column.

“There’s been a bust at the 2010 Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show and Conference (SHOT Show). The FBI has arrested 21 ‘executives and employees of military and law enforcement products companies’ for bribery of foreign officials,” the report explained.

“SHOT Show bust leaves more questions than answers,” a follow-up story reported the next day, including:

  • Did grandstanding for headlines by going after high-profile industry figures play a part in the bust?
  • Was the operation “indicative of continued noncooperation and friction between their agency [ATF] and the FBI”?
  • Was there “any dot-connecting to do in terms of the administration’s renewed push to ratify the global Arms Trade Treaty”?
  • And importantly, was the case “likely to boost the career of the guy ramrodding the operation, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division, an Obama pick who gained notice on the national stage helping represent Bill Clinton during his impeachment”?

Breuer, regular readers of this column know, was an early top Justice Department figure tied in with “Project Gunwalker” in reports done here and by Mike Vanderboegh at Sipsey Street Irregulars, long before corroborating evidence, testimony, documents and reports provided more widespread validation of his involvement.

And now, per this new report:

[C]iting two hung juries, rulings during the cases as to what constituted “evidence” and the “substantial governmental resources, as well as judicial, defense, and jury resources” needed to continue the case, the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division Lanny Breuer has decided to drop the case.

“Now the question is: what about the defendants?” the report asks.  It’s a good question, and one that points to the inherent dangers of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act under which they were prosecuted.

What about the defendants, what about the awesome legal expenses they have incurred to protect themselves from an administration with an agenda that has practically unlimited resources to bring to bear against them, what about the smears against people’s names and damages done to their reputations? What about derailed careers, what about the living hell they—and their families—have gone through for two years…?

And what about ruthlessly ambitious Obama administration officials, up to their own necks in a criminal international gun trafficking conspiracy of their making, all the while doing their utmost to continue their subversion of the right to keep and bear arms in a way designed to bypass the legislature, that is, to keep things “under the radar”?

[Thanks to W3]


About David Codrea

David Codrea is a long-time gun rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He is a field editor for GUNS Magazine, and a blogger at The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance. Read more at www.DavidCodrea.com.

David Codrea