Hannity Lets His Guests Peddle Discredited Fast And Furious Conspiracy Theory

Sean Hannity is not big on correcting false claims made by the guests on his Fox News show. On June 19, for instance, it was Mitt Romney whose numerous false claims Hannity let stand uncorrected.

On the June 20 edition of Hannity, two separate guests pushed the claim that the Obama administration deliberately created the Fast and Furious operation in order to undermine the Second Amendment. First, Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin asserted that the Obama administration “let [the guns] go because they had an underlying gun-control agenda.”

Monica Crowley, also a Fox News contributor, said later in the show that Fast and Furious “may not have been” a “botched operation,” adding: “Maybe -- and this is just speculation -- but maybe what they are trying to hide here is the fact that was all by design. ... That everything they do is by design, and that this operation was set up as an assault on the Second Amendment. In other words, flood the zone with guns, actually have some dead bodies -- I don't think they intended American dead bodies -- but then trace the guns back to the United States as an excuse to crack down on legal gun ownership.”

In fact, head of the House's investigation into Fast and Furious, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, wrote last month in a memorandum and accompanying report that the Fast and Furious operation “was conceived because law enforcement officials ”hoped the weapons, after they were recovered at crime scenes in Mexico, could be traced and linked to cartel operatives including possible high-level financiers, suppliers, and possibly even king-pins." A June 2011 "joint staff report" prepared for Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) came to a similar conclusion.

Nevertheless, Fox News reporters, anchors and commentators have repeatedly pushed this baseless conspiracy theory on the channel.

Likewise, Hannity made no move to correct either Malkin or Crowley.