Issa: Pony Up Those Gun-Walker Documents Or Face Contempt

The lawless Obama and lawless Holder are refusing to release documents relating to the murder of a US citizen. Claiming... something. Elijah Cummings, a Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, claims the release of the documents could somehow compromise 20 active investigations.

[I]n an April 13 letter to Issa, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Welch cited the Justice Department’s policy not to disclose details about “ongoing criminal investigations” as a reason not to comply with the document demand.

Issa says the objection is spurious.

“We are not conducting a concurrent investigation with the Department of Justice, but rather an independent investigation of the Department of Justice,” Issa says in his April 20 letter, citing three historical examples of congressional oversight of Justice Department investigations, including during the Teapot Dome scandal in 1922.

ATF did provide access to four documents for “in camera” review at Justice Department headquarters, Issa says, but the documents were “general” and did not “directly pertain” to Operation Fast and Furious, in which guns were permitted to be smuggled to Mexico.

Issa's hunch (almost certainly right) is that it's "unfathomable" that such an operation and such a policy could have been enacted by the permanent bureaucracy, on its own initiative, without getting a greenlight from the "top officials," by which I think he means political appointees. So Obama's refusal to comply is not based on any legitimate law enforcement purpose but is due to his simple desire to protect his political appointees.

Who approved this operation? That's a simple question and could not possibly jeopardize any prosecutions.

So why isn't that basic question answered?

Pretty obvious, huh? That's the question they really don't want to answer, but an answer that has nothing at all to do with jeopardizing any prosecutions.

posted by Ace at 04:58 PM

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