WASHINGTON—A House committee will vote June 20 on whether to hold U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt, the committee announced Monday.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by California Republican Darrell Issa, is after documents from the Justice Department (DOJ) relating to the botched gun-tracking program, Fast and Furious.
“The Obama administration has not asserted Executive Privilege or any other valid privilege over these materials and it is unacceptable that the Department of Justice refuses to produce them,” Issa said in a statement.
The DOJ has refused to release the documents, created after Feb 4, 2011, saying they show “internal department deliberations,” Issa says, but he has accused Holder of obstructing the investigation and in doing so of contempt.
“Congress has an obligation to investigate unanswered questions about attempts to smear whistle-blowers, failures by Justice Department officials to be truthful and candid with the congressional investigation, and the reasons for the significant delay in acknowledging reckless conduct in Operation Fast and Furious,” he said in the statement.
The Fast and Furious gun-walking program, set up to stop the flow of weapons from the United States into Mexico, backfired when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) allowed thousands of guns to be purchased by straw purchasers—arms traffickers ostensibly working on behalf of Mexican drug cartels.
Fewer than half the guns were tracked down and some were found at the scene of violent crimes, including the shooting death of Arizona Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.
Issa, along with Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, has been investigating events surrounding Fast and Furious for over a year, and has become the Republican lead on the issue.
Holder has been called to testify before Congress a number of times and has acknowledged the program’s failures.
“We now know … inappropriate tactics were used in an attempt to stem the flow of illegal guns across the Southwest border,” he said in opening remarks at a hearing June 7. “Although these law enforcement operations … were focused on the laudable goal of dismantling illegal gun trafficking networks, they were flawed in both concept and execution.”
Holder says he has given congressional investigators the necessary information.
The committee vote is likely to lead to a full House vote on the contempt charges, which Issa believes has some Democrat support. He noted however that Holder could avoid the contempt process if he would just produce the subpoenaed documents.
“I am confident we can reach agreement on other materials and render the process of contempt unnecessary,” he said.
Mexican drug cartels have been responsible for over 47,000 deaths since 2006 according what the Mexican government reported January this year. A 2010 report from Mayors Against Illegal Guns indicates that 90 percent of firearms recovered and traced in drug cartel-related crimes in Mexico originated in the United States.
Mayors Against Illegal Guns is a coalition of over 600 U.S. mayors and was co-founded by Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg. The report also noted that U.S. states in the southwest were the source for 75 percent of the firearms.
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