Issa: ‘No question’ Justice dumped ‘Fast and Furious’ docs
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Thursday accused Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department of using Election Day to dump thousands of documents related to the botched Fast and Furious operation.
Issa argued the department chose Tuesday to release the documents because it would be unlikely to affect an election.
{mosads}“Least likely day to affect an election, there is no question at all,” Issa said in an interview on Fox News.
The Department of Justice on Monday night released 64,280 pages of documents relating to the gun-tracking program, which came under fire in 2011.
The program involved releasing guns and then tracking them in a bid to take down drug runners. Critics have blamed the program for the killing of border patrol agent Brian Terry.
Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform panel, has long sought documents from the White House and led a successful effort to hold Holder in contempt of Congress over the administration’s refusal to turn over documents.
Issa said staffers are pouring through the thousands of pages, which arrived in individual PDF documents.
One email from Holder reads that “Issa and his idiot cronies never gave a damn about this when all that was happening was that thousands of Mexicans were being killed with guns from our country.”
Issa smiled when the Fox host introduced the email by saying, “I think maybe he wanted you to see this.”
“I traveled to Mexico to meet with leaders there and to meet with the [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] agents in Mexico who were actually deceived and denied access to this activity,” Issa said.
“This was an undercover activity that specifically cut out our allies in Mexico from any kind of knowledge. So, if there’s culpability, I think it really belongs with the attorney general.”
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