Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry
STRONG MESSAGE: Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (far left) confers with counsel before yesterday’s vote on the “Fast and Furious” probe, in which guns (top right) that had been sent to Mexico to track cartel members were found at the scene where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry (right) was slain. (
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WASHINGTON — A House committee moved forward with its threat to charge Attorney General Eric Holder with contempt of Congress yesterday, despite a last-minute bid by President Obama to invoke executive privilege to keep documents secret in the “Fast and Furious” gun-running probe.
Voting along party lines, Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voted for the contempt charge by 23-17, sending the battle with the Obama administration to a full House vote next week and setting up a constitutional fight during the presidential-election campaign.
House leaders fumed yesterday at Obama’s demand for executive privilege to withhold from the committee thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation of the botched federal operation.
“The Department of Justice has fought this committee investigation every step of the way,” said committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). “Over and over, the department has sought to protect its political appointees.”
House Speaker John Boehner yesterday pointed to Obama’s assertion of executive privilege as implicating the White House.
“Until now, everyone believed that the decisions regarding ‘Fast and Furious’ were confined to the Department of Justice,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said.
“The White House decision to invoke executive privilege implies that White House officials were either involved in ‘Fast and Furious’ or the cover-up that followed.”
Committee Democrats blasted Issa and his GOP colleagues, calling the move political theater.
“It shouldn’t be a political witch hunt of the attorney general of our country and the president in an election year,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY).
Holder has denied any knowledge of the flawed project, in which 2,000 guns were allowed into Mexico in hopes of helping catch Mexican drug-cartel leaders. Hundreds of guns were lost and showed up at Mexican murder scenes and the site of the shooting death of US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
Terry’s parents, Josephine and Kent Terry Sr., released a statement yesterday through their lawyer that blasted Holder and the White House.
“Attorney General Eric Holder’s refusal to fully disclose the documents associated with Operation Fast and Furious and President Obama’s assertion of executive privilege serves to compound this tragedy. It denies the Terry family and the American people the truth,” the statement read.
Terry died on the Arizona border in a December 2010 gunfight with Mexican bandits. Two of the “Fast and Furious” weapons, AK-47 assault rifles, were found at the scene.
“Brian Terry has been dead 500 days and nobody’s been held accountable,” said Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY). “That is what this committee is trying to find out, who is responsible for the death of a US border agent.”
Issa contends that the Justice Department was aware of the 2009-2010 program operated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Arizona and has subpoenaed tens of thousands of department documents in a bid to prove it.
Holder has provided 7,600 documents, which Republicans noted is only 10 percent of the records available. Holder has insisted that releasing more documents would compromise an internal DOJ investigation and would be against federal law because the papers contain grand-jury material.
At issue are documents created after February 2011, when the Justice Department sent the committee a letter saying that the ATF had made every effort to stop guns from crossing the border.
The department withdrew that letter eight months later, and the committee wants to know what transpired in between.
“The key question has always been, what did this administration know and when did they know it?” said Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho).
This is the first time Obama has invoked executive privilege. George W. Bush invoked it six times during his two terms, and Bill Clinton used it 14 times over his eight years.
The White House yesterday ridiculed committee Republicans for their action.
“Instead of creating jobs or strengthening the middle class, congressional Republicans are spending their time on a politically motivated, taxpayer-funded, election-year fishing expedition,” White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer said.
The matter is now in Boehner’s hands. The speaker said he will call for a full House vote next week.
If the House approves the contempt citation, the matter would be turned over the to US Attorney for the District of Columbia for criminal prosecution.
Holder called the vote an “election-year tactic” and denied that he has been uncooperative.