Iowa's Grassley responds to Obama's executive privilege move on 'Fast and Furious'

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Dept says that President Barack Obama has asserted executive privilege to withhold documents a House committee is seeking in an investigation of a flawed gun-smuggling probe.

In a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., a Justice Department official said the privilege applies to documents that explain how the department learned that there were problems with the investigation called Operation Fast and Furious.

"“The assertion of executive privilege raises monumental questions," Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said in a statement released Wednesday shortly after the president's move. "How can the President assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement? How can the President exert executive privilege over documents he's supposedly never seen? Is something very big being hidden to go to this extreme? The contempt citation is an important procedural mechanism in our system of checks and balances. The questions from Congress go to determining what happened in a disastrous government program for accountability and so that it's never repeated again.”

Grassley is the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee and has previously called a Justice Department investigation into the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning operation “botched.”

Tuesday, Grassley told the Daily Caller that Attorney General Eric Holder is looking for a “free pass” on the issue.

Before the White House exerted executive privilege today, Grassley expressed frustration with the Obama administration’s actions.

“The attorney general wants to trade a briefing and the promise of delivering some small, unspecified set of documents tomorrow for a free pass today,” Grassley told the Daily Caller on Tuesday. “He wants to turn over only what he wants to turn over and not give us any information about what he’s not turning over. That’s unacceptable. I’m not going to buy a pig in a poke. Chairman Issa is right to move forward to seek answers about a disastrous government operation.”

More on This Developing Story

A House committee is poised to vote on whether to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over more Justice Department documents on a flawed gun-smuggling probe that resulted in hundreds of guns illicitly purchased in Arizona gun shops winding up in Mexico.

The likelihood of a contempt vote rose after Holder and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., failed to reach agreement Tuesday in a 20-minute meeting at the Capitol.

Issa wanted the documents immediately. Holder told reporters he would not turn over documents on the gun-smuggling probe called Operation Fast and Furious unless Issa agreed to another congressional briefing on the Justice Department material. Holder wants an assurance from Issa that the transfer of the records would satisfy a subpoena from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which Issa heads.

"If we receive no documents, we'll go forward" with a contempt vote, Issa told reporters.

Holder says he is prepared to turn over documents detailing how the department arrived at the conclusion that federal agents engaged in a risky tactic called gun-walking. In February 2011, when the controversy over the law enforcement operation was first disclosed, the department denied that agents had engaged in gun-walking.

"It's a whole variety of material, and it's consistent with what we have already made available — emails, documents of that nature — that really go into the way in which the department handled itself from February of 2011 until December of 2011," Holder told reporters.

Ordinarily, such deliberative documents are off-limits to Congress. In Operation Fast and Furious, the Justice Department's initial incorrect denials are seen as providing justification for Congress' document demands.

Issa and the House Republican leadership have asked whether the department's initial denial in a Feb. 4, 2011, letter to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, was part of a broader effort to obstruct a congressional investigation.

The material "pretty clearly demonstrates that there was no intention to mislead, to deceive," Holder told reporters.

"The attorney general has made an unprecedented offer to turn over documents that are part of the Department of Justice's internal deliberations and work product and to brief the committee on their contents," said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, one of the committee's Democrats and a former federal prosecutor. "Regrettably, Chairman Issa refuses to take yes for an answer."

"We have offered to make materials available ... to brief on those documents, to answer any questions that might come up with regard to the documents that we produced," the attorney general said.

"The ball's in their court," Holder said. "We made what we thought was an extraordinary offer."

Issa took a different view: "After this meeting I cannot say that I am optimistic" for avoiding a contempt vote.

Issa spokesman Frederick Hill said that at the meeting, "the attorney general indicated he would only be willing to produce a subset of documents that numbered fewer than 1,300 pages if the committee would first agree that the production of these documents would end the committee's investigation of the Justice Department."

Issa declined the offer.

In a letter to Issa on Tuesday night, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said "our offer would have provided the committee with unprecedented access to these documents, many of which are not covered by the committee's subpoenas in this matter."

More on this developing story as it happens ...

Wednesday, June 20, 2012