Sharyl Attkisson Sharyl Attkisson is a CBS News investigative correspondent based in Washington. All of her stories, videos and blogs are available here.
Posted on 06/14/2011 1:11:35 PM PDT by neverdem
WASHINGTON - Today, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing to explore whether Congress has the right to hold the Justice Department in contempt in the so-called ATF "gunwalker" investigation.
Experts indicated the Justice Department should probably be more forthcoming when responding to the document requests from Congress. They said Congress has the right to resort to contempt proceedings, but that the document tug-of-war between the co-equal branches of government is not unusual.
In this case, it's getting heated. Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, has said more subpoenas are forthcoming. He accuses the Justice Department of withholding documents after a subpoena he issued to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF); which is under the Justice Department's jurisdiction.
Issa subpoenas ATF over gunwalking allegations
Morton Rosenberg, a specialist in American public law, formerly with the Congressional Research Service, told Congress, "the Department of Justice has the power to string out your investigation, refuse to obey it, and then when it's time for contempt...say all you can do is bring a civil action which will extend and delay your constitutional ability to enforce your" legislative powers.
Democrats on the Oversight Committee defended the Justice Department saying it has provided some documents to Congress. "The Department in fact had produced to the committee or made available to the committee staff for review approximately 1,336 pages of subpoenaed documents to date," said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-MD. Cummings added that turning over more could jeopardize the ongoing investigation into potential crimes at issue in the gunwalker case. Chairman Issa argued that all of the documents turned over were already publicly available on the Internet, or too highly redacted to be of use in the investigation.
ATF Agent: I was ordered to let guns go into Mexico
In the gunwalker case, ATF agents say they were ordered to allow thousands of weapons to be sold to suspected suppliers for Mexico's drug cartels. The idea of letting so many guns "walk" onto the street was apparently to see where they would turn up and go after the major cartel kingpins instead of the smalltime weapons traffickers.
Today's hearing was a precursor to Wednesday's gunwalker hearing, which will feature the family of murdered border patrol agent Brian Terry and a Justice Department official. Members of Congress will also hear from three ATF agents, including whistleblower John Dodson who first spoke to CBS News in March.
Sharyl Attkisson Sharyl Attkisson is a CBS News investigative correspondent based in Washington. All of her stories, videos and blogs are available here.
I think he could be tossed out of the House for that argument.
I don’t care what the stated motives were. The plan was to create a crisis in Mexico and along the border which they could use to justify gun bans within the USA.
Bookmark.
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Experts indicated the Justice Department should probably be more forthcoming when responding to the document requests... but that the document tug-of-war between the co-equal branches of government is not unusual.
Issa isn’t going to quit easily.
Can you imagine the money we would save if the ATF were to go the way of the Dodo bird???
We could fund the continuous operation of Apache gunships to fly high cover over any and all drug interdiction missions over the entire border...Seeings how the cartels now know they can start shooting from their side of the border at our Law Enforcement when they spring into action...
I thinnk a few encounters with some highly trained and experienced AH-64 crews and their 20mm weed-eaters would eventually change the tide of the cartels influence...
And the Mexican and Federal government can go pound sand as far as a few of us are concerned...
They had their chance, its now our turn...All we need is a little money...Obamacare is taking care of any surpluses or rainy day funds the states have worked hard to save up...
Anyone got any other ideas of what we can do to fund an agressive air response to the increasing violence on the border???
I could make several very, very good political ads out of this fiasco.
DOJ will come clean, one way or another.
I think he could be tossed out of the House for that argument.
That would be called racist. Cummings can do no wrong. See Charlie Rangel.
ping
Holder’s toast
“Never forget: The heart of the story is the apparent criminal conspiracy to fabricate crime scene evidence in order to gain the political power to infringe the Constitutional rights of Americans, by using “US-sourced” Mexican crime scene guns to justify restrictions on Americans buying rifles.”
Go get ‘em Issa!
Holy rescission, Batman, how ever can we bring DoJ to heel? (IOW, it’s the budget, stupid!) Zero out the BATFE budget and have the backbone to stick to it.
Ok, I can hope, can't I?
5.56mm
This thing is getting legs.
Just heard it as the lead on ABC radio news at noon.
Sound bite of parent of (missed name) asking that those in gov. Be prosecuted to full extent of law.
When the media puts a human face on the story things tend to heat up.
Watching.
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