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BY BLAKE HANSON

The Department of Justice is in the hot seat after new documents reveal exactly how it handled the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm’s botched “Fast and Furious” program. Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs reports...

“The Justice Department admitting it essentially misled Congress on the botched gunrunning operation. The Department of Justice tonight providing Congress with documents that detail how the Department of Justice gave inaccurate information to Senator Charles Grassley who is overseeing the investigation from the Senate side.”

Congress is investigating whether the ATF sanctioned the transport of guns across the U.S. - Mexico border in an attempt to track the weapons to drug cartels. The scandal arose after whistle blowers revealed one of the guns that “walked” across the border was found at the scene of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s death. The documents highlight an internal battle by DOJ officials. CNN writes...

“In early February 2011, as the issue was heating up, the documents show Justice officials struggled for days over how to respond to Grassley. … At the last moment, Justice officials halted sending out letters to Grassley because of uncertainty over the facts of Fast and Furious, and over how forcefully to respond.”

KNXV says the release of documents is not a common move by the DOJ...

“The Department of Justice just released some internal emails. It’s a really rare move, and they’re important because they reveal how the department provided wrong information to congress about the ATF issue.”

But Talking Points Memo notes that a former U.S. attorney is pointing fingers not at the DOJ, but at Grassley’s staff.

“A former U.S. Attorney who resigned in the wake of ATF’s botched operation Fast and Furious called Sen. Chuck Grassley’s staff ‘willing stooges for the Gun Lobby’ when the Senator started investigating the issue in early 2011... ‘I am so personally outraged by Senator Grassley’s falsehoods,’ former Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke wrote...”

And The Examiner offers further analysis as to why the documents were released now.

“The document dump comes just six days before Attorney General Eric Holder is scheduled to appear before the House Judiciary Committee to testify about what he knew and when he knew it. Congressional sources close to the investigation suggest that this document release is timed to give Holder cover, and overwhelm Congressional investigators who have been digging into the scandal for the past 11 months.”