Judge: Justice Dept Must Provide List Of Documents

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., calls on his panel to find former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for her previous refusal to answer questions at two h... House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., calls on his panel to find former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for her previous refusal to answer questions at two hearings probing on whether tea party and conservative political groups had been targeted for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 10, 2014. Lerner was head of the IRS unit that decides whether to grant tax-exempt status to groups. Yesterday, Wednesday, April 9, 2014, the House Ways and Means Committee voted to refer former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution in the agency's tea party controversy. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) MORE LESS
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to provide Congress with a list of documents that are at the center of a long-running battle over a failed law enforcement program called Operation Fast and Furious.

In a court proceeding Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson set an Oct. 1 deadline for producing the list to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The Justice Department says the documents should remain confidential and President Barack Obama has invoked executive privilege in an effort to protect them from public disclosure.

The House panel says the Justice Department documents might explain why the department took nearly a year to admit that federal agents had engaged in a controversial law enforcement tactic known as gun-walking.

The Justice Department has long prohibited the risky practice. But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives used it with disastrous results in a federal law enforcement probe in Arizona, Operation Fast and Furious.

In the operation, federal agents permitted illicitly purchased weapons to be transported unimpeded in an effort to track them to high-level arms traffickers.

Federal agents lost control of some 2,000 weapons and many of them wound up at crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S. Two of the guns were found at the scene of the December 2010 slaying of border agent Brian Terry near the Arizona border city of Nogales.

After Wednesday’s court proceeding, Justice Department spokeswoman Emily Pierce said that “we are pleased the judge recognized that executive privilege includes a deliberative process beyond presidential communications” — a point the department has been arguing in its dispute with Congress.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the chairman of the House panel, said that the privilege log “will bring us closer to finding out why the Justice Department hid behind false denials in the wake of reckless conduct that contributed to the violent deaths of border patrol agent Brian Terry and countless Mexican citizens.”

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Latest News
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: