Attorney General Eric Holder can still avoid contempt of Congress hearings if he agrees to hand over the documents that he has so far refused to release, says Rep. Darrell Issa, the GOP congressman leading the inquiry into the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal.
All Holder’s Justice Department has to do is “pledge its cooperation and stop stonewalling on critical documents outlined by the committee in the draft contempt report,” Issa’s spokeswoman Becca Watkins told
The Daily Caller.
Those documents include “what high ranking officials knew about Fast and Furious and when they knew it, information about informants and their roles, and how the Justice Department changed its view from denying that gunwalking occurred to acknowledging that Fast and Furious was fundamentally flawed,” she added.
Issa, the California congressman who chairs the House Oversight Committee, issued a draft complaint asking the full House to hold contempt hearings last week, claiming that Holder had failed to comply with a congressional subpoena.
Operation Fast and Furious was a scheme run by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives under which agents allowed guns to be bought and smuggled over the Mexican border in the hope that they could be traced and would lead to drug cartel leaders.
© 2013 Newsmax. All rights reserved.