Sensenbrenner Threatens Impeachment of US Attorney General

Thursday, 08 Dec 2011 01:43 PM
By Henry J. Reske

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., has raised the prospect of impeaching Attorney General Eric Holder over the Fast and Furious gun tracking operation. The senior GOP lawmaker, who made the comments at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, said impeachment was a possibility if Holder does not come clean about inaccurate statements and information provided to Congress, The Hill reported.

"If we don't get to the bottom of this — and that requires your assistance on that — there is only one alternative that Congress has, and it's called impeachment," Sensenbrenner said, according to The Hill.

"And I don't want to go this far, but if we keep on getting pushed down the road and the can keeps on getting kicked and we don't get closure to this, what is Congress to do so that we don't spend all of our time in court arguing privilege, which is not a way to get at the truth?"

The gun tracking operation was run by the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and was designed to stop the flow of guns purchased in the United States and taken across the border to Mexican drug gangs. However, the operation went awry and guns ended up in the hands of criminals.

In his testimony, Holder denied that anyone in the Justice Department had lied or intentionally misled Congress.

“We now know that some information provided by those supervisors was inaccurate,â€