How long as the Fast and Furious scandal been known about? It’s been a while and the House Oversight Committee is finally moving to hold a hearing on whether or not Eric Holder should be nailed for contempt:
(CBS News) CBS News has learned the House Oversight Committee will vote next week on whether to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. It’s the fourth time in 30 years that Congress has launched a contempt action against an executive branch member.
This time, the dispute stems from Holder failing to turn over documents subpoenaed on October 12, 2011 in the Fast and Furious “gunwalking” investigation.
[…]
However, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., says the Justice Department has refused to turn over tens of thousands of pages of documents. Those include materials created after Feb. 4, 2011, when the Justice Department wrote a letter to Congress saying no gunwalking had occurred. The Justice Department later retracted the denial.
“The Obama Administration has not asserted Executive Privilege or any other valid privilege over these materials and it is unacceptable that the Department of Justice refuses to produce them. These documents pertain to Operation Fast and Furious, the claims of whistleblowers, and why it took the Department nearly a year to retract false denials of reckless tactics,” Issa wrote in an announcement of the vote to be released shortly. It will reveal the vote is scheduled for Wednesday, June 20.
Will anything come of this? I’m not holding my breath. With the exception of a handful of members of Congress, it appears as though the legislative body has been less than apathetic in pursuing Fast and Furious. On the other hand this ruling could be a big deal during the election and the Republicans have a vested interest in ruling Holder in contempt. As the Republicans hold the majority of seats on the committee and have a vested interesting in holding Holder in contempt something may actually come of this. Of course state agents are also vested in protecting one another from prosecutions related to their criminal activities so the House Oversight Committee may not vote to hold Holder in contempt, doing so may cause the Democrats to seek revenge by calling the Republicans on one of their criminal activities. This is the problem with organized criminal entities, reform is almost impossible because everybody has dirt on everybody else. Ruling Holder in contempt would also interfere with the state’s move to push gun control forward, which was, at least one of, the goals of Fast and Furious.
This will be an interesting case to continue watching to say the least.