(GunReports.com) — A House committee filed a civil suit Monday seeking to override President Barack Obama’s first invocation of executive privilege and force the Justice Department to turn over documents related to a bungled gun-trafficking operation called Fast and Furious.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s 41-page civil contempt of Congress lawsuit against Attorney General Eric Holder argues that the Obama administration is required by law to turn over the subpoenaed documents that relate to Operation “Fast and Furious.”
The House’s legal action “seeks to obtain documents covered by the subpoena that will show why the Justice Department took ten months to retract a Feb. 4, 2011 letter which contained false denials of the reckless investigative tactics used in Operation Fast and Furious,” the committee said in a press release.
“Portentously, the (Justice) Department from the outset actively resisted cooperating fully with the committee’s investigation,” the lawsuit said.
“Among other things, the department initially declined to produce documents; later produced only very limited numbers of documents in piecemeal fashion; refused to make available to the committee certain witnesses; and limited the committee’s questioning of other witnesses who were made available,” it said.
The failure of Holder to turn over the documents led to votes in June that held the attorney general in civil and criminal contempt of Congress. The civil contempt resolution led to Monday’s lawsuit.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), who as chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has led the congressional investigation of Fast and Furious, said the president exceeded his authority.
“Waiting nearly eight months after the subpoena had been issued to assert a meritless claim of privilege, the president’s decision was a calculated political maneuver designed to stop the release of documents until after November’s election,” Issa said in a news release.
