Oversight Committee Ranking Minority Leader Rep Elijah Cummings wants Chairman Darrell Issa to withdraw his Contempt Citation of Attorney General Eric Holder over Operation Fast & Furious.
Chairman Issa tried to question Mr. Holder during a hearing in front of the House Judiciary Committee about the wiretaps, but was interrupted by Reps Jackson-Lee and Watt because the wiretaps are sealed and they shouldn’t be part of his subpoena. Chairman Issa insisted the wiretaps are not part of the subpoena. He would know, since he signed the October 11, 2011 subpoena.
After the hearing, Rep Cummings issued this statement in a press release (bold my emphasis):
The Chairman has been demanding these wiretap applications for months and even threatened to hold the Attorney General in contempt for not providing them, yet today he claimed he never wanted them in the first place. It makes no sense to hold the Attorney General in contempt for withholding documents that Chairman Issa claims he never requested. These changing demands raise fundamental questions about the investigation and suggest that it is designed to promote an election-year political agenda rather than obtain needed information.
As Ranking Minority Leader, Rep Cummings knows this is not true.
Anyone can view the contempt citation at the Oversight Committee website and see that Chairman Issa is telling the truth. Pages 14-21 explain the 22 categories of the subpoena. None of them mention the wiretaps. Chairman Issa did not include wiretap applications in the subpoena. The wiretap applications are talked about on pages 9-10, but no request or demand for them. He knew they existed and who knew about them because of internal emails.
Chairman Issa’s spokeswoman Becca Watkins released this statement to The Daily Caller’s Matthew Boyle.
“The Ranking Member is clearly uncomfortable discussing the significance of reckless conduct explained in the wiretap applications and is making a muddled attempt to change the subject with a confusing argument that has no merit,” Watkins wrote in an email. “Rep. Cummings has made it abundantly clear over the last year and a half that he’s not interested in knowing what really went wrong in Operation Fast and Furious.”
So who is really playing the political game? The Democrats will do anything to make this go away, including making up “facts” and disrupting GOP representatives trying to question Mr. Holder about Fast & Furious. Rep Cummings proves once again he is more concerned about his fellow Democrats than he is about finding and giving justice to Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and the hundreds of Mexicans who’ve died because of Fast & Furious.