House Panel’s Vote Steps Up Partisan Fight on Gun Inquiry Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — A long-simmering fight between Republican lawmakers and the Obama administration sharply escalated on Wednesday, as a Congressional panel recommended that the House of Representatives cite Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. for contempt and President Obama asserted executive privilege to shield Justice Department documents from disclosure.
Immediately after the House oversight committee voted along party lines to approve the contempt recommendation, Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said the full chamber would vote on the request next week unless Mr. Holder turned over more documents related to the botched gun-trafficking investigation known as “Fast and Furious.”
The president’s move to invoke executive privilege was the first time that he had asserted his secrecy powers in response to a Congressional inquiry. It elevated a fight over whether Mr. Holder must turn over additional documents about the gun case into a constitutional struggle over the separation of powers.
Months in the making, the developments on Wednesday moved the dispute to a new level of partisan acrimony in the midst of a presidential election. Democrats said the move was intended to embarrass Mr. Holder and inflict political damage on the administration, noting that Congress has never cited a sitting attorney general for contempt.
But Republicans accused the administration of a “cover-up” and questioned the validity of Mr. Obama’s claim of executive privilege for internal Justice Department deliberations.
“Our purpose has never been to hold the attorney general in contempt,” said the committee’s chairman, Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California. “Our purpose has always been to get the information the committee needs to complete its work — that it is not only entitled to, but obligated to do.”
In a statement, Mr. Holder portrayed the committee’s action as “political theater,” saying Mr. Issa was trying to “provoke an avoidable conflict between Congress and the executive branch” as an “election-year tactic.”
The Republican takeover of the House after 2010 gave Mr. Issa a platform to investigate the Obama administration, which he has called the “most corrupt” in history. A critic of Mr. Holder from the start of his chairmanship, Mr. Issa focused on Fast and Furious, a gun trafficking inquiry by the Phoenix division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives......................................>>>>........................>>>>............................http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/us/obama-claims-executive-privilege-in-gun-case.html?_r=1
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