House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz said Wednesday there has been a “concerted effort” to keep up to 20,000 Department of Justice documents about the government’s role in the Fast and Furious Scandal from being turned over to Congress.
“There was a concerted effort here to make sure that the Congress never saw the light of day on these documents,” the Utah Republican told Fox News’ Bret Baier. “If you’re going to withhold documents … there needs to be a consequence to that and the new administration I hope will go back and prosecute these people, because they’re clearly breaking the law.”
In January, a U.S. District Court judge upheld the committee’s request and gave the department 60 days to hand over all information about its role in the 2009-2011 Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal.
The DOJ turned over a few thousand subpoenaed documents late last week, hours before the court-ordered deadline, but only a fraction of the total the oversight committee had requested. The committee has since appealed for the full folder of documents.
Chaffetz added that in an email with former Attorney General Eric Holder, the lead prosecutor had agreed the papers should be turned over to the legislative branch in their entirety.
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Operation Fast and Furious emerged out of the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) in 2009. The operation saw ATF officers allow the sale of guns to straw purchasers, for the purpose of tracking those guns back to Mexican drug cartels. But the ATF lost track of many of the weapons, and one was found at the scene where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered in 2010.
