Facing a possible contempt charge and Republican calls for his resignation, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder signaled to Congress Tuesday a new desire to cooperate with an investigation into the Fast and Furious gun walking operation to avert what he believes could become a “constitutional crisis.”
Holder, who was made his ninth appearance before Congress, indicated that he wants to stave off an embarrassing contempt vote against him.
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Still, by Tuesday Holder was fielding calls for his resignation from Republican senators with a growing list of gripes, including Holder’s reluctance to turn over documents about Fast and Furious, his decision to allow his own deputies to investigate possible White House leaks of sensitive national security information, and his efforts to prevent Florida from purging illegal immigrants and dead voters from the state’s rolls.
“In short, you’ve violated the public trust, in my view, by failing and refusing to perform the duties of your office,” said Sen. Jon Cornyn, R-Texas, who called on Holder to resign during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. That call came a day after a House committee scheduled a June 20 vote on contempt of Congress charges against Holder.
Republican lawmakers are demanding tens of thousands of documents related to Fast and Furious, a botched gun-tracking program under which hundreds of U.S. guns were sold in Mexico. U.S. agents intended to follow the guns to leaders of Mexican drug cartels. But one of those guns was used to kill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in 2010.
Holder maintains that his office has cooperated with Congress. Any documents that were withheld were kept back because the Justice Department itself is investigating Fast and Furious, he said. But on Tuesday Holder opened the door to a compromise, telling Senate Republicans he needs only a “willing partner” to strike a deal.
“I want to make it very clear that I am offering to sit down, by myself, with the speaker, the chairman, with you, whoever, to try to work our way through this in an attempt to avoid a constitutional crisis and come up with ways, creative ways perhaps, in which we can make this material available,” Holder told the Senate committee.
Lawmakers accuse Holder of stonewalling on their requests for documents that date back to October. The information Holder has provided, Republicans said, is material they have already seen or so heavily redacted that it’s useless to their efforts to determine when top Justice Department officials learned about Fast and Furious, how they responded and how they treated the whistleblowers who reported its failings.
Sources inside the Justice Department leaked information to a House committee last week showing that high-level Justice officials knew about the problematic gun program but allowed it to continue.
Holder called Cornyn’s criticism of his tenure “breathtaking in its inaccuracy,” and said he will not resign.
“I heard the White House press officer say yesterday that the president has absolute confidence in me,” Holder told Cornyn. “I don’t have any reason to believe that that, in fact, is not the case.”
Democrats, meanwhile, say the Republican charges against Holder are politically motivated and an attempt to embarrass President Obama.
