House panel: Let courts decide "Fast and Furious"

Attorney General Eric Holder speaks during a news conference in New Orleans, Thursday, June 28, 2012. / AP Photo/Bill Haber

WASHINGTON A House panel said Wednesday it believes federal courts have the authority to decide a dispute in which Attorney General Eric Holder is refusing to provide Congress with Justice Department documents about a botched criminal investigation into gun-trafficking on the Southwest border.

In a 65-page filing about Operation Fast and Furious, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said federal courts have routinely reviewed the validity of congressional inquiries. The lawyers for the House said Holder's contention that courts cannot adjudicate political disputes would permanently shut the courthouse doors to virtually all disputes between the executive and legislative branches.

In court papers filed last month, the Justice Department said the courts must defer to the time-tested political process of stepping aside and letting Congress and the executive resolve their political differences.

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"Labeling a dispute 'political' is not a legal argument; it is a talking point masquerading - poorly - as an argument," said the filing for the committee chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. "Federal courts have been deciding cases regarding the executive's compliance with subpoenas since the earliest days of the Republic."

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ATF agent explains why he let guns "walk"

In the dispute over Operation Fast and Furious, President Barack Obama has invoked what is known as executive privilege. The Republican-run House in June voted Holder in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over subpoenaed records that might explain what led the Justice Department to reverse course after initially denying that federal agents had used a controversial tactic called gun-walking in the failed law enforcement operation.

"It is no exaggeration to say that if the courthouse door is closed to Congress in subpoena enforcement cases of this nature, the executive's incentive to respond to congressional requests for information largely will disappear and, with it, effective congressional oversight of the executive branch," the House's court papers said.

In Fast and Furious, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives abandoned the agency's usual practice of intercepting all weapons they believed to be illicitly purchased, often as soon as they were taken out of gun shops. Instead, the goal of the gun-walking approach was to track such weapons to high-level arms traffickers who long had eluded prosecution, and to dismantle their networks.

Federal agents lost track of many of the guns. The operation identified more than 2,000 illicitly purchased weapons, and some 1,400 of them have yet to be recovered.

[antoniof123]

I say congress should open hearings on it all including Iraq. Oh wait that was them now it is the other group.

They didn't learn from 1998 okay looks like 4 years is change time.

Good luck in 2014 you will need it.

[dan3607]

BORING

[KKong164]

Wait for it, wait, wait

"Executive Privilege"

There it is!

Well done, Obama dissemblers.

[RollotheNorman]

LOL, RepubliCONs are still flogging this dead old carcass? Fortune Magazine, a bizzness mag, mind ya, already published the definitive article on this F&F witch-hunt. Howzabout the courts strip or at least shackle the oversight function of RepubliCON headed committee's in either house seeing how blatantly they misuse and abuse it?

[krystal1p]

you wouldn't think it was a dead horse if your son or daughter got killed. where do all you stupid people hide during the day?

[RollotheNorman]

" krystal1p replies:
you wouldn't think it was a dead horse if your son or daughter got killed. where do all you stupid people hide during the day?"

Hmmm. Stupid people? I thought ditto heads were the very definition of the propaganda fed simpleton. Do read the Forbes Magazine story, then tell me why Issa and the other RepubliCON fools on his committee shouldn't all be flogged with 30 lashes. Their little pronouncement of "the courts should deal with it" is about the most gracious way they can find to back away from this stench their committee created, for the purpose of pre-election positioning. They'll get the courts to read the brief, snicker, then make some sober pronouncement that means absolutely nothing and then quietly let it die, because their was nothing but noise there in the first place. Of course, I wouldn't expect a truly stupid imbecile like yourself to understand all that, but hide and watch, that's how it will play out.

[eroteme2]

Obama's media has done well in limiting Fast and Furious news coverage. The Benghazi tragedy will most likely be buried as well, causing no problems for Obama and his pals.

[Holly-wood]

Who is your media numb nuts? Faux News?

[OliverKlosovII]

I have not heard of any such attempt to "track" the weapons of F&F, which would require Mexican assistance. Mexican officials were never informed, and there was no way to "track" the movement of those weapons once they crossed the border.
The only purpose I can see to F&F was to have those weapons "traced" to American dealers (who were ordered by BATFE to make the sales) once they were confiscated, most likely from crime scenes.
The true purpose of F&F would then be accomplished --- manufacture "evidence" to support the oft repeated lie of the Obama Administration, "Lax gun laws in America are arming Mexican drug cartels".