There’s another showdown underway on Capitol Hill.
This time, Attorney General Holder is faced with the most Congressional pressure yet, as he continues to refuse to take responsibility for Operation Fast & Furious, a botched Justice Department gunrunning program left more than 2,000 weapons in the hands of Mexican drug gangs, and resulted in the death of 300 Mexican nationals – and one U.S. Border Patrol agent.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has had it with the Justice Department and the lack of cooperation from Attorney General Holder.
In a letter to the Attorney General, Rep. Issa says he will hold the Attorney General in contempt of Congress unless the nation’s top law enforcement officer complies with the panel’s subpoena for documents relating to Operation Fast & Furious by February 9th.
Rep. Issa said the Justice Department has “misrepresented facts and misled Congress” and said that the Attorney General’s “actions lead us to conclude that the department is actively engaged in a cover-up” because the DOJ refuses to comply with previous subpoenas. Issa accused the Justice Department of trying to “obstruct our investigation and deceive the public” by withholding documents.
FOX News reports on the lack of documents presented:
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, Issa’s Senate counterpart in the inquiry, said Tuesday that the documents sent to Congress are not even 10 percent of those received at the inspector general’s office, which Holder requested investigate the case last year. Grassley said Congress has only received 6,000 pages of documents while the department’s inspector general has 80,000 documents in hand.
The department has yet to explain why it is “withholding each of those 74,000 pages,” Grassley said in a statement . . . .
We have heard from more than 50,000 Americans demanding that the Attorney General cooperate. As we have repeatedly said, the Attorney General needs to come clean. Present the information Congress is requesting. Take responsibility for this fatally-flawed operation.
He will get another opportunity to do just that when he appears Thursday before Rep. Issa’s House Oversight Committee. The question is, will he?
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