Will Attorney General Eric Holder be held in contempt Congress?
It’s a question that could be answered this week as lawmakers
consider what would be just the fourth contempt action against a
member of the executive branch in the last thirty years. Janet Reno
was the last attorney general to hold such a dubious
distinction.
Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who chairs the
House Oversight Committee, is finally losing his patience with
Holder. The committee has subpoenaed documents related to the
“gun-walking” scandal Operation Fast and Furious. The Justice
Department has not forked them over or even bothered to invoke a
legal argument for why they don’t have to.
Issa originally scheduled a contempt vote at the committee level
for Wednesday, but
signaled late last week he would be willing to give Holder a
reprieve in exchange for internal documents the attorney general
finally seems willing to part with concerning a Justice Department
statement to Congress on the scandal that was false and had to be
withdrawn.
Holder generously allowed that the “department is prepared to
provide documents that, while outside the scope of the committee’s
interest in the inappropriate tactics used in Fast and Furious, are
responsive to how the department’s understanding of the facts
regarding that matter evolved throughout 2011 and how the
department came to withdraw its February 4, 2011 letter to Senator
Grassley.”
Whether the vote takes place as scheduled or is postponed, it
remains unclear whether this will shine a brighter media spotlight
on the Fast and Furious fiasco. Under this now-canceled offshoot of
Project Gunrunner, federal agents were ordered to allow illegal gun
buyers to transport weapons to Mexico. The argument was that this
would lead the government to the cartels. Instead the guns didn’t
turn up until they were used in crimes, including the murder of at
least one border patrol agent and an untold number of Mexican
citizens.
Fast and Furious sounds like something out of a movie, and most
of the media seems unwilling to pull the scandal into the realm of
nonfiction. One exception to this general rule in Katie Pavlich, a
young Townhall reporter who wrote the book
Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and the
Shameless Cover-Up. She doesn’t miss a beat when asked why
so few journalists cover the story.
“It would complicate Obama’s reelection campaign,” Pavlich says.
“Most of the media doesn’t want to tell a story that makes him look
bad in an election year so they have been complicit in this
cover-up.” She contends that the loss of life makes this far worse
than Iran-Contra or Watergate, both of which were media
obsessions.
But like Watergate, a key question is what did senior officials
know and when did they know it. Issa sent Holder a letter about six
Fast and Furious wiretap applications from 2010 that were approved
by Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer and Deputy Assistant
Attorney General Jason Weinstein. Despite the date on the
applications, Holder and Breuer have maintained that they didn’t
know about Fast and Furious until sometime in early 2011 — after
Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was slain.
Holder repeated those assertions in testimony before the House
Judiciary Committee earlier this month. “Fast and Furious was a
mid-level, regional investigation,” the attorney general
maintained. “Mr. Weinstein and Mr. Breuer did not know about the
tactics being used in Fast and Furious until the beginning of last
year.”
Highly unlikely, says Pavlich, who notes that “in order to apply
for and have a wiretap approved, agents must submit extremely
detailed information about a case.” In her telling, Holder and
other Justice Department officials are stonewalling to protect
their political hides.
Pavlich doesn’t even buy the notion that Fast and Furious was
merely a botched investigation. She contends that the “emails,
documents, and interviews” prove that the Obama administration
sought all along to blame American gun dealers for escalating
violence in Mexico, with the goal of rebuilding political support
for gun control and the reinstatement of the assault weapons ban.
In her book, she shows that many of the political appointees close
the story haven’t exactly been friendly to the Second
Amendment.
One of the rare
mainstream media reports on Fast and Furious backs this up:
“Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert
operation ‘Fast and Furious’ to argue for controversial new rules
about gun sales.” And congressional Democrats seldom let an
opportunity pass to talk about gun control during committee
hearings about the scandal.
Katie Pavlich has written the book on Fast and Furious. Darrell
Issa might be getting ready to throw it at Eric Holder.
