By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
The Obama administration suffered a legal setback on the last night of September when a federal judge ruled that a lawsuit against Attorney General Eric Holder, filed by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, may proceed.
The lawsuit seeks access to thousands of pages of subpoenaed documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious, the scandalous gun running operation mounted in late 2009 by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Arizona.
The 44-page ruling, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, affirmed the Oversight Committee’s position that President Barack Obama could not assert executive privilege to prevent those subpoenaed documents from being turned over to the committee.
Judge Berman Jackson’s ruling was greeted enthusiastically by Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the Oversight Committee. He issued a blistering statement blasting the Justice Department and House Democrats.
“This ruling is a repudiation of the Obama Justice Department and Congressional Democrats who argued the courts should have no role in the dispute over President Obama’s improper assertion of executive privilege to protect an attempted Justice Department cover-up of Operation Fast and Furious,” Issa said. “I remain confident in the merits of the House’s decision to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt; this ruling is an important step toward the transparency and accountability the Obama Administration has refused to provide.”
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), who launched the first Capitol Hill probe of the gun running operation, which was mounted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives field office in Phoenix, Ariz., was also critical of President Obama’s attempt to shield the documents.
“The President’s sweeping assertion of executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents is completely contrary to the transparent government that he promised and beyond any valid claim of privilege under the law,” Grassley said. “The documents subpoenaed by the House of Representatives are essential to gaining a full understanding of the gunwalking program that led to the tragic death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent and the efforts to keep the truth about it from Congress and the American people.”
Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, launched his own investigation but did not have the power of chairmanship to hold formal hearings.
“Given that its refusal to comply with the subpoena is unlikely to survive legal scrutiny,” Grassley added in his statement, “I fully expect the Obama administration to continue to put up procedural roadblocks to resolving this dispute. However, I look forward to the court finally deciding the case on the merits.”
Carlos Canino, former ATF attaché to Mexico who now works out of the agency’s Tucson office, called Fast and Furious “the perfect storm of idiocy.”
In her ruling, Judge Berman Jackwon wrote, “In the Court’s view endorsing the proposition that the executive may assert an unreviewable right to withhold materials from the legislature would offend the Constitution more than undertaking to resolve the specific dispute that has been presented here.”
She also noted that, “It is well established that the Committee’s power to investigate, and its right to further an investigation by issuing subpoenas and enforcing them in court, derives from the legislative function assigned to Congress in Article I of the Constitution.”
President Obama extended executive privilege to thousands of pages of subpoenaed documents in mid-2012. Congress, on a bipartisan vote, held Holder in contempt of Congress in late June of that year. It was the first time in history that the attorney general had been held in contempt.
In January, settlement talks were proceeding, but Judge Berman Jackson rejected Holder’s bid to dismiss the lawsuit.
The House Oversight Committee began investigating Fast & Furious early in 2011, a few months after the December 2010 slaying of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in the desert of southern Arizona. Two guns linked directly to the operation were recovered at the scene. Two independent journalists – Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea and Sipsey Street Irregulars blogger Mike Vanderboegh – initially unearthed the scandal, but the mainstream press essentially ignored the story until CBS News investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson scored an on-air interview with an ATF whistleblower that revealed how ATF supervisors in Arizona allowed guns to be “walked” into the hands of Mexican drug cartel gunmen. Attkisson earned an award for her investigative pieces, and Codrea was honored for his work at the 2011 Gun Rights Policy Conference in Chicago.
Some believe that the subpoenaed documents may contain damaging evidence of an administration cover-up of the scandal, which allowed some 2,000 to 2,500 guns to be “walked” across the border. The majority of those guns have yet to be recovered. Others are not certain what the documents contain, but are suspicious because of Holder’s refusal to turn them over, and his successful appeal to the president for executive protection.
The scandal brought about changes in command at ATF in Washington, D.C. and at the Phoenix field office. Bureau officials in charge of the case are no longer with the agency, and supervisors have been transferred. A former U.S. Attorney for Arizona abruptly resigned in August 2011 at the same time that then-acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson stepped down from that post.
