President Obama might not comply with a court order that they release documents related to Operation Fast and Furious, the gun walking program that developed into a national scandal in his first term.
A federal judge ordered the documents to be released by February 2. Those documents relate to the controversial gun walking program that allowed weapons to leave the country without a trace, after which some have been found at crime scenes at the border.
“We are still reviewing that ruling,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch told senators Wednesday when asked if the government could comply with the court decision. She told Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., that the government might pursue “additional legal action”
“I can certainly assure you that we will be responding to the committee or to the court at the appropriate time,” she said.
More delays could rekindle the fight between congressional investigators who are seeking the documents, and the Justice Department. Justice’s decision not to provide the documents led former Attorney General Eric Holder to become the first cabinet official to be held in contempt of Congress.
U.S. District Judge Amy Jackson Berman, an Obama appointee who was confirmed in 2011, concluded that the president was wrong to assert executive privilege over the documents. “Since any harm that would flow from the disclosures sought here would be merely incremental, the records must be produced,” she wrote in Tuesday’s order.
Former House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa, who led a series of aggressive investigations of the Obama administration but was faulted by his colleagues for losing political messaging fights with Democrats, hailed the court decision as a vindication of his strategy in the fight with Holder.
“This decision underscores the inappropriateness of President Obama’s politically motivated assertion of Executive Privilege,” the California Republican said in a Tuesday statement. “Those responsible have gone to great lengths to obstruct the truth and to cover up the motives, facts, and circumstances surrounding why they lied to Congress about a program that put weapons in the hands of drug cartels.”
