May 16, 2012

SandBoxBlogs: Daily Caller "Obama administration shrugs off contempt threat against Holder"

Matthew Boyle:
"The U.S. Department of Justice struck back on Tuesday against House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa’s push to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for his failure to comply with a congressional subpoena related to Operation Fast and Furious.

“We believe that a contempt proceeding would be unwarranted given the information the Department has disclosed to the Committee to date; unprecedented given the law enforcement sensitivities at issue; and ill-advised given the damage it would cause to relations between the Executive and Legislative Branches,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole wrote to Issa on behalf of the DOJ.

“The Committee’s concerns about the Department’s response to the October 11 subpoena appear predicated on a misunderstanding both of the extraordinary lengths the Department has gone to respond to the Committee’s requests, of of the threat that disclosures of sensitive law enforcement information would pose to open criminal investigations and prosecutions,” Cole continued. “Furthermore, we believe that the core questions posed by the Committee about Operation Fast and Furious have been answered.”

Cole suggested that documents proving high-level Department of Justice officials had knowledge of Fast and Furious “do not exist.”

“[T]he lack of documents makes clear,” Cole wrote, “that these tactics had their origin in the field in Arizona and not among Department leaders in Washington.”

Holder has failed to comply with Issa’s Oct. 12, 2011, subpoena. With respect to 13 of the subpoena’s 22 categories, Holder has provided no documents. He is far from compliant with the subpoena’s other sections as well....."  (Read more? Click title)

"Unapologetic pursuit and tracking of patterns within the news others make since 2010."

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