WASHINGTON — The congressman leading the charge to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for withholding documents related to a botched federal gun-running program said yesterday that he expects a full House vote for contempt this week.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee that voted last week to cite Holder, also said he doesn’t think the White House knew of the program or participated in a coverup.
“It’s regrettable that we’re here, and we certainly would like not to be here, and if the president and Attorney General Holder would simply start producing the documents they know they can produce to us . . . this could be delayed or eliminated,” Issa said on “Fox News Sunday.”
The so-called Fast and Furious project resulted in 2,000 federal guns being released into Mexico in hopes of tracking them to Mexican cartel leaders. But hundreds of the guns were lost, and some were found at Mexican murder scenes and the site of the shooting death of a US Border Patrol agent.
President Obama last week declared executive privilege in withholding the records.