Boehner confirms Holder contempt vote over 'Fast and Furious'

June 27, 2012, 10:23 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John A. Boehner confirmed Wednesday that the House will vote on whether Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is to be ruled in contempt of Congress for his role in the "Fast and Furious" gun-running program, and his refusal to share some documents with House committees.

Saying that last-minute talks between Republicans and the White House failed to result in an agreement on the desired documents, Boehner said “we’d really rather not be here,” but that wouldn’t stop the vote from moving forward.

“This vote was scheduled last week,” he said. “We’d really rather have the attorney general and the president work with us to get to the bottom of a very serious issue.”

Fast and Furious was a failed government operation that attempted to monitor the sale of guns by U.S. dealers to straw buyers, who then sold the firearms to members of Mexican drug cartels. But federal agents lost track of the guns, and some of them started to show up at crime scenes in Mexico. A few of the weapons also were found at the scene of a shootout that killed Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in 2010. After Terry's death, details of the operation leaked to the media, with House oversight committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Vista) leading the subsequent investigation into the scandal.

The vote over Holder’s fate stems from a dispute over documents related to Fast and Furious that President Obama ruled to be under executive privilege.

Boehner (R-Ohio) has expressed his concern with the vote’s progression in the past, telling conservative radio host Laura Ingraham last week that “while politically this may not be the smartest thing to do, we have taken an oath of office and we are required to follow it.”

The National Rifle Assn., which has declared that Thursday’s vote will be under consideration for its future evaluations of lawmakers, further muddied the waters, putting pressure on House Democrats to vote in favor of the resolution to curry favor with the NRA. The organization has said in the past that it sees Fast and Furious as part of an “anti-gun agenda.”

So far, Reps. Jim Matheson (D-Utah), Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) and John Barrow (D-Ga.) have announced their support for ruling Holder to be in contempt of Congress.

“The only way to get to the bottom of what happened is for the Department of Justice to turn over the remaining documents, so that we can work together to ensure this tragedy never happens again,” Barrow said in a statement Wednesday.

The House Committee on Rules will meet at 2:00 p.m. Wednesday to confer on the contempt resolution before it’s expected to reach the floor for debate Thursday.

Boehner confirms Holder contempt vote over 'Fast and Furious' - latimes.com