Attorney General Eric Holder faced tough questions about the “Fast and Furious” gun-trafficking scandal from outraged members of Congress during a Thursday hearing, but he continued to defiantly stonewall while refusing to hand over key documents subpoenaed in the congressional investigation. Republican lawmakers responded by telling the Justice Department boss to resign and saying that if the cover-up continues, he could be charged with contempt of Congress.
Obama’s top law enforcer defended the Justice Department’s stonewalling by falsely claiming that providing information about the deadly federal operations to congressional investigators would somehow violate the “separation of powers.” He said an internal investigation is ongoing. But lawmakers on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee were not buying it.
“When is the primary investigative committee of Congress, of the U.S. House, going to be allowed to have the same access that your own self-appointed — essentially self-appointed — Inspector General has?” wondered Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who has led the congressional investigation in the House.
In a letter to the Justice Department sent before the hearing, Rep. Issa continued to demand the documents, warning that there would be consequences for failing to comply. "If the department continues to obstruct the congressional inquiry by not providing documents and information, this committee will have no alternative but to move forward with proceedings to hold you in contempt of Congress," Issa wrote to Holder. The DOJ responded by saying it would be “impossible” to meet the February 9 deadline.
Congress has received several thousand documents — many of them irrelevant to the investigation, others redacted — out of some 80,000 being sought, meaning the DOJ has supplied less than 10 percent of the documents requested. About two-thirds of the document categories subpoenaed by the oversight committee have been withheld by the department as well.
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