On August 12, Daily Caller reporter Matthew Boyle published an article trumpeting a book's inflammatory claim that Attorney General Eric Holder ordered raids against medical marijuana dispensaries in California in order to distract from the failed Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Operation Fast and Furious. But during an interview on NRA News last night, Boyle admitted that there was “not really any evidence” to substantiate the claim.

Boyle's article is largely a regurgitation of allegations made in an excerpt released from the forthcoming book Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana - Medical, Recreational and Scientific, authored by Martin A. Lee. In fact, his article is so reliant on Lee's claims that quotations of the author comprise nearly two-thirds of the 708 word piece.

But on Monday, Boyle acknowledged on NRA News that “there is not really any evidence” to support Lee's claims, only “coincidental ... timing.” Indeed, Lee's allegation that “The Justice Department green-lit a scorched earth campaign against medicinal cannabis in order to placate law enforcement and control the damage from the Fast and Furious scandal by deflecting attention to other matters” seems to be based solely on the fact that four federal prosecutors in California announced the raids the same day Holder sent a letter to Issa “defending his handling of the Fast and Furious affair.”

Boyle has a long history of spurious and false reporting on Operation Fast and Furious. The Daily Caller was accused by Holder last year of ginning up a campaign to oust the Attorney General. 

From NRA News:

CAM EDWARDS, NRA NEWS HOST: The media was basically ignoring [Fast and Furious]. They didn't want this to be a scandal. I don't know if I necessarily buy the argument that Eric Holder decided to, you know, go after medical marijuana dispensaries in California and crack down and launch this, you know, huge assault to distract from Fast and Furious. Does he have any evidence to back this up?

BOYLE: I mean he is using, basically, the coincidental same timing of everything that's going on at the same time. I mean it does kind of makes in sense in that there's only so many reporters in the mainstream media covering the Department of Justice. And if they've got a choice, “Ok we can cover that Eric Holder is going after medical marijuana dispensaries” or “Eric Holder is arming the Mexican drug cartels.” Which one is the mainstream media going to pick? Eric Holder is enforcing the law. That's what they are going to pick. That's the storyline that they are going to cover because we all know that the majority of mainstream reporters are lazy and that they are not going to dig into the real scandals and the real stories that plague this Obama administration. And basically that's kind of where his argument makes a little bit of sense. But I mean he doesn't really have any more evidence other than essentially the politics of coincidence. And the timing all lines up. But other than that -- I mean we will have to wait and see when the book comes out, to see if there is any more real concrete evidence in there --

EDWARDS: Right.

BOYLE: -- but in the excerpt that was published this weekend, no, there is not really any evidence.

While Boyle said that “we will have to wait and see when the book comes out, to see if there is any more real concrete evidence” of Lee's claims, he did not explain why he chose to write a story on the allegations in the absence of such evidence.

The Daily Caller: Where “the politics of coincidence” are evidence enough to justify an article - as long as it targets the Obama administration.