CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS – LEGAL AFFAIRS
June 14, 2012 – 3:35 p.m.
Holder Offers Compromise to Issa on ‘Fast and Furious’ Documents
By Rob Margetta, CQ Staff
Attorney General
Holder, who earlier in the week testified that he wants to aid congressional inquiries into Fast and Furious, wrote to Government Oversight and Reform Chairman
The attorney general requested a meeting with Issa to “assure that there are no misunderstandings about this matter and to confirm that the elements of the proposal we are making will be deemed sufficient to render the process of contempt unnecessary.”
Holder and Issa have spent months arguing over the scope of information the department should turn over in response to the committee’s subpoena. The attorney general said Thursday that Issa’s willingness to restrict the scope of his inquiry, dropping his request for documents related to the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of officials involved with Fast and Furious, was helpful.
“The committee’s decision not to insist on the production of those materials is an important step forward in this accommodation process,” Holder wrote.
Issa has scheduled a June 20 hearing on a draft contempt resolution against Holder that he circulated last month. He has said the attorney general could avoid such action by giving the committee what it wants.
This week, the chairman said he is looking for documents that could show involvement of senior Justice officials with Fast and Furious, an operation run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’s Arizona office that allowed gun traffickers to take firearms into Mexico, with the goal of building cases against drug cartel leaders.
Issa said he also wants department communications related to how Justice officials responded when Congress started asking questions about the operation.
Holder expressed a willingness to cooperate on those topics, saying Justice is prepared to provide documents that show “how the department’s understanding of the facts regarding that matter evolved throughout 2011.”
Fast and Furious’ use of “gun-walking,” a tactic forbidden by Justice Department policies, came to congressional attention after the December 2010 fatal shooting of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Two guns that the operation allowed into Mexico were found at the crime scene.
Holder’s Republican critics have focused on a letter the department sent Congress two months after the shooting, which said the ATF makes “every effort” to stop guns from crossing the border. Some lawmakers have said that part of the letter, which the department withdrew 10 months later, shows that officials were lying to Congress or engaged in a coverup.
Holder said he would provide documents showing how the department came to withdraw the letter. He also reiterated an explanation for the letter that he has provided at several hearings: that Fast and Furious was confined to the Arizona ATF office, and superiors at Justice were unaware of it.
“Until allegations about the inappropriate tactics used in Fast and Furious were made public, department leadership was unaware of those tactics,” Holder wrote Thursday, adding that the department has already provided the committee with documents showing that when top officials asked those involved with the operation about the problematic tactics, they were assured the allegations were false.
Holder Offers Compromise to Issa on ‘Fast and Furious’ Documents
The department is prepared to offer the “extraordinary accommodation” of a briefing that would explain how it came to recognize during 2011 that Fast and Furious was fundamentally flawed, and will answer lawmakers’ questions about the treatment of ATF whistleblowers who reported problems with the operation, Holder told Issa.
“We believe that this briefing, and the documents we are prepared to provide . . . will fully address the remaining concerns identified in the recent letters to me from you and House leadership,” he wrote.