Relating to Consideration of House Report 112-546 and Accompanying Resolution, and Providing for Consideration of House Resolution 706, Authorizing Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to Initiate or Intervene in Judicial Proceedings to Enforce Certain Subpoenas

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. Speaker, the investigation that's being conducted by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is a legitimate investigation. But the recommendation to this House to hold the Attorney General in contempt is reckless, irresponsible, unnecessary, and will actually get in the way of the pursuit of truth.

Why do I say that?

If you're going to do an investigation, you have to begin at the beginning, and the beginning of Fast and Furious and gunwalking began in the Bush administration. There's no evidence that President Bush was aware of it. There's some questions about what his Attorney General knew, what and when.

But if you are sincerely interested in trying to find out what happened, how it happened, how in the world do you not begin at the beginning?

And despite that fact, the requests of many of us on the committee who support an investigation, who support the use of a subpoena, who support the aggressive right of Congress to get access to documents that it needs, have been denied the opportunity to bring in witnesses about what happened and how it happened during the Bush administration.

We've been denied the opportunity to bring in Attorney General Mukasey, despite the fact that there was evidence that he was personally briefed on the botched efforts to coordinate interdiction with Mexican authorities. Then-Attorney General Mukasey was also told that the ATF field office in Phoenix planned to expand these operations during his tenure. So our question really quite simply is, begin at the beginning.

That foundation of an open and exhaustive search is what this committee, the Committee on Government Reform, owes to this House of Representatives before it asks the Members of this House to vote on the extraordinary measure of finding a sitting Attorney General in contempt.

Secondly, we've got to do our job with care. The original subpoena that went out and was there until the Friday before the Wednesday in which we voted was demanding that the Attorney General turn over documents that would have been illegal for him to turn over--transcripts of the grand jury.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WELCH. So transcripts of the grand jury, transcripts of wiretap applications, which is not only a violation of the U.S. Code, but would jeopardize law enforcement officials if that word got out. That is an irresponsible and overbroad subpoena.

So the bottom line is to let the investigation continue, but let's acknowledge that the job that the committee needs to do before it asks for a vote of contempt has not been done.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source