House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa signaled Tuesday that his committee will “move forward with the contempt proces against Attorney General Eric Holder unless the Justice Department commits to “providing, at a minimum, a detailed description of documents it is withholding” from his committee in the course of their investigation into ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious.
“The Justice Department’s request for additional time has, unfortunately, not been followed by efforts to bridge the significant differences between its legal obligation to Congress and the reality of its stonewalling,” Issa said in a statement. “The committee is determined to know what happened in Operation Fast and Furious and how the Justice Department responded when it was publicly confronted with evidence of reckless conduct after Agent Terry’s death.”
Issa wrote in his letter that DOJ “is playing political gotcha games, instead of allowing a co-equal branch of government to perform its constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch” (emphasis in original), commenting on Holder’s criticism of Issa’s investigation.
Issa also objected to the Justice Department only making Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer available for public testimony rather than a transcribed interview, which Issa said was “the only way” to get factual information that is key to their investigaiton. A Justice Department official told TPM that he should give his testimony in public given his role at the Department and the fact that he’s testified on the topic before.
