Holder requests Fast and Furious docs from Issa, Grassley for ‘independent’ investigation
The Department of Justice says its Office of Inspector General is conducting an independent investigation into the gunwalking Operation Fast and Furious, which Congress is already probing.
Attorney General Eric Holder requested a transcript of Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa from their secret July 4th meeting with Ken Melson, acting Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives director.
Holder and other DOJ officials have repeatedly said the DOJ’s Inspector General is doing its own internal investigation into what went wrong with Fast and Furious.
“Since the OIG is supposed to be conducting an independent inquiry, it seems odd that the Department would make a document request on behalf of that office,” Grassley and Issa wrote to Holder on Tuesday. “We presume that if the OIG would like to make such a request, it is capable of doing so on its own initiative. However, we have not received any such request from the OIG.”
In their Tuesday letter, Grassley and Issa also ask Holder to provide complete and full answers to all of the questions they sent him on July 22. Issa and Grassley say Holder failed to do so in his most recent response.
They say “perhaps the most troubling reply” Holder gave them was that the ATF did not have detailed information available on 11 instances ATF admits being aware of that Fast and Furious weapons were recovered inside the United States in “connection with violent crimes.” (RELATED: Issa, Democrats, NLRB fight spar over oversight committee document demands)
“The question specifically asked you to ‘describe the date and circumstances of each recovery [in the United States] in detail,’” the top Republican congressional investigators wrote. “However, the reply failed to do so.”
Issa and Grassley also say Holder failed to provide an “enumerated response” when they asked him if the Deputy Attorney General’s office or any other DOJ agency was given a briefing paper outlining Fast and Furious’s mission. “Currently, our strategy is to allow the transfer of firearms to continue to take place,” the briefing paper read.
Issa and Grassley point out that Holder’s response, that unnamed DOJ officials became aware of that briefing paper once the House Oversight Committee began investigating Operation Fast and Furious, didn’t answer their question.
“That may be true and somewhat related to the question, but it falls far short of being responsive,” they wrote. “Whether some unnamed DOJ officials may have learned of the briefing paper during the Congressional investigation in 2011 tells us nothing about which other officials at Department components outside ATF may have received the briefing paper in 2010.”
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