The chairman of the House Oversight
and Government Reform Committee has circulated to committee members a draft of
a contempt of Congress resolution against Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.,
citing the "refusal" of the nation's top prosecutor to cooperate in
an investigation of the botched "Fast and Furious" gunrunning
operation.
The 64-page draft resolution and
accompanying 17-page staff briefing paper explain what Rep. Darrell E. Issa,
California Republican and committee chairman, called the "reckless conduct"
of the Fast and Furious investigation, the "hardships" faced by the
family of a U.S. Border Patrol agent killed with a weapon purchased in the
probe, how agents who blew the whistle on the operation faced retaliation, and
the "carnage in Mexico" that Fast and Furious helped fuel.
Investigations by Mr. Issa and Sen.
Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee,
found that ATF had allowed more than 2,000 weapons [-] including AK-47 assault
rifles [-] to be "walked" to Mexican drug smugglers. Two
Romanian-made AK-47s purchased during the probe were found at the site of the
December 2010 shooting death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry, 40,
who was killed just north of the Arizona border town of Nogales.
Mr. Grassley noted on Thursday that
the Justice Department and Mr. Holder initially denied gunwalking occurred, but
have since withdrawn the denials and admitted that ATF whistleblowers were
right to complain about the tactic. He said that despite the constitutional
responsibility of Congress to conduct oversight of the executive branch, the
Justice Department "stonewalled every step" of the Fast and Furious
investigation. He said the department provided 80,000 pages of documents to its
Office of Inspector General in connection with Fast and Furious, but only 6,000
pages of documents to Congress.
"Congressman Issa deserves
credit for moving forward on contempt. The attorney general and the Justice
Department are thumbing their nose at the constitutional authority provided to
the legislative branch to conduct oversight," Mr. Grassley said, adding
that Mr. Holder is facing a "real test of leadership."
"He can force the department
to come clean, or he can force a high-stakes political conflict between the
legislative and executive branches," he said. "It´s past time to hold
accountable those public officials responsible for our own government´s role in
walking guns into the hands of criminals."
