How the Holder Justice Department shuts up a whistleblower

The man pictured above is Jay Dobyns. He is a former ATF agent who infiltrated

Hell's Angels and worked on cases involving the Aryan Brotherhood and MS-13 during his law enforcement career.

Last summer the federal judge pictured above, US Court of Federal Claims Judge Francis Allegra,

awarded Dobyns $173,000 in damages and rebuked the ATF for failing to adequately protect Dobyns and his family.

The controversy began after someone burned down the home of Dobyns. Dobyns claimed the ATF failed to protect his family, but the agency claimed Dobyns burned down his own home, a charge he denied. Dobyns then sued the ATF in U.S. Federal Claims Court for damaging his reputation and retaliation.

That’s when Justice Department lawyers got involved. In the ruling from last month, Allegra found a key witness in the trial said he was threatened by another ATF agent – and that ATF lawyers told the threatened agent not to tell the judge about it.

Judge Allegra angrily accused Justice Department attorneys in newly unsealed documents of "fraud upon the court" by intimidating a witness

“It is atrocious. If they can do this to a highly decorated federal agent, imagine what they can do to the average Joe,” said Vince Cefalu, a former agent who helped expose the Operation Fast and Furious scandal and who successfully sued the ATF for retaliating against him.

The ATF declined to comment on the case. Fox News also asked Attorney General Eric Holder if the lawyers involved had been disciplined. The Department of Justice declined to comment.

Blogger David Codrea, one of the first to discover the unsealed documents, said it shows “a pattern of institutional corruption and arrogance that gets its tone set from the top.”

Read more here.