Date: 2012-06-28
Speaker: JACKSON LEE (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Speaker. I rise today to oppose H. Res 708. "Resolution recommending that the House of Representatives find Eric H. Holder. Jr.. Attorney General. U.S. Department of Justice. in contempt of Congress for refusal to comply with a subpoena duly issued by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform." Holding a sitting Attorney General in contempt would be unprecedented. In our Nations history the House of Representatives has never held a sitting Attorney General in contempt of Congress. In 1998. the then Chair of the House Oversight Committee led a vote to hold then Attorney General Janet Reno in contempt of Congress. Attorney General Reno was also accused of withholding documents. however. the then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich elected not to bring the Contempt Citation to the Floor. Attorney General Reno and House leadership were able to resolve their difference without holding our Nations highest law enforcement officer in contempt. Todays conflict can also be resolved without holding Attorney General Holder in contempt. I firmly believe and I am joined by at least 65 other colleagues who believe that the Attorney General is acting in good faith based upon his actions over the course of the past 15 months. The Attorney General has testified before Congress no less than nine times in the last 15 months and has made himself available for meetings with Members of Congress. Further. the Department of Justice has cooperated with Congressional inquiries into this matter and is willing to continue to engage in discussions with Congressional leadership and others. As of today. the Attorney General has produced more than 7.600 pages of documents as part of 47 separate productions. including sensitive law enforcement materials related to the pending prosecution of the defendants in the underlying Fast and Furious case. Attorney General Holder has consistently expressed his willingness to find a resolution to the issues surrounding the narrow list of documents for which he is being cited. Holding the Nations top lawenforcement officer in contempt of Congress would be a drastic. disproportionate action on the part of this body. A contempt citation should be an act of last resort. after lengthy preliminary procedures. negotiations. gathering of evidence through other methods. appeals to potential intercessors and intermediaries. Contempt Citations have been extraordinarily rare which is evidenced by the fact that the House has declared just four people in contempt over the last three decades. For these reasons and more we request that you elect not to bring the Contempt Citation to the Floor this Thursday. Mr. Speaker. I delivered a letter to you that was signed by 65 Members of this body stating the same. that this destructive piece of legislation should not be brought to the Floor today. It appears that this is nothing more than destructive electionyear politics pure and simple. It is Republicans following through on their threats to use their authority to try to damage this Administration. politically. and this Attorney General. specifically. who has placed an emphasis on enforcing civil rights. voting rights and defending our justice system and the rule of law. This kind of divisive politics hurts Americans who want their leaders focused on fixing real problems they face every day and hurts law enforcement agents who are putting their lives at risk in ongoing investigations that could be compromised by the Committees political fishing expedition. Congress has the answers to its questions about who designed this flawed operation and who authorized itthey just dont like it so they have ignored the evidence they received last year which shows this was a tactic that was designed and employed in the field and it dates back to the previous Administration. This Attorney General is the one who put a stop to the tactic. called for an independent investigation and instituted reforms and personnel changes to ensure it doesnt happen again. The Department has made extraordinary efforts to accommodate Congress by turning over almost 8.000 documentsincluding all the documents that relate to the tactics in this flawed investigation and the other flawed investigations that occurred in Arizona in the previous administration. The Department has even turned over internal deliberative material to answer the Committees questions and the AG offered to provide additional deliberative documentation to resolve the subpoena. but the Committee rejected that offer. The documents at issue now are afterthefactthey have nothing to do with the flawed tactics in any of the investigations dating back to the Bush Administration or who designed. approved or employed them. The resolution relates to a document request involving allegations of "gunwalking" in an ATF operation known as "Operation Fast and Furious." which came to light when two weapons involved in the operation were recovered at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. However. the documents now at issue are completely unrelated to how "gunwalking" there is a question about whether gunwaling existed was utilized in the operation. Over the past year. the Justice Department has provided thousands of pages of documents to the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and has made dozens of officials available for interviews and hearings. and the Attorney General has testified before Congress nine times on this topic. The evidence demonstrated that Fast and Furious was in fact the fourth in a series of gunwalking operations run out of the ATF field division in Phoenix over a span of five years beginning in 2006 during the Bush Administration. The investigation identified no evidence that the Attorney General or senior Department officials were aware of gunwalking in Fast and Furious. To the contrary. as soon as the Attorney General became aware of the tactic. he put a halt to it. ordered an IG investigation. and instituted internal reform measures. The House of Representatives has never held an Attorney General in contempt. The only precedent cited in the Issa contempt resolution is a committee contempt vote that took place in the 1990s held by thenChairman Dan Burton against former Attorney General Janet Reno. That action became so widely discredited that Speaker Gingrich chose not to bring it to the Floor for a vote. The current contempt debate no longer focuses on any documents relating to how gunwalking was initiated and utilized in Operation Fast and Furious. Since Republicans could identify no wrongdoing by the Attorney General. the Committee shifted just last week to focus exclusively on a single letter sent by the Departments Office of Legislative Affairs to Senator CHARLES GRASSLEY on February 4. 2011. initially denying allegations of gunwalking. The Department has already acknowledged that its letter was inaccurate. has withdrawn the letter. and has provided the Committee with more than 1.300 pages of documents relating to how it was drafted. These documents show that Department staffers who drafted the letter did not intentionally mislead Congress. but instead relied on inaccurate assurances from ATF leaders and officials in Arizona who ran the operation. Despite these good faith efforts. House Republicans chose to move forward with a contempt resolution anyway. Moving the goalposts again. the Committee is now demanding additional internal deliberative documents created even after the Grassley letter was sent. The Attorney General offered to provide them last week in exchange for a good faith commitment to move toward resolution of the contempt fight. but Chairman Issa flatly refused. When it became clear that contempt was inevitable. the Administration asserted executive privilege over this narrow category of deliberative Department documents. while indicating at the same time that it remains willing to continue negotiations. The Issa contempt resolution is nothing more than a politically motivated. electionyear ploy. During this investigation. the Committee refused every Democratic request for a hearing witness. including the head of ATFthe agency that actually ran the operation. Chairman ISSA has acknowledged that "we do go down blind alleys regularly" and has made numerous unfounded claims. including accusing the FBI agents of concealing a "third gun" from the scene of Agent Terrys murdera claim that the FBI quickly demonstrated to be completely unfounded.