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. LANKFORD. Mr. Speaker, I would have to concur. This is an incredibly sad day. This administration that started talking about transparency has now sunk to the level of actually concealing documents.

Never has an Attorney General been held in contempt of Congress because every other Attorney General has turned over documents to Congress when they were requested. This Attorney General has not.

I would just compare this whole controversy with the Secret Service scandal from several months ago. They put everything out, released all the documents, walked through it. It was done. The GSA scandal, released all the documents, held people accountable. It was done. ATF even, when we started this investigation a year and a half ago, put all their documents out, put all their people out, done.

As soon as we get to the Department of Justice, it's slow. It's delay, it's delay, it's delay. The question is, Why? Why this matters when we get to the Department of Justice documents? Because in the Phoenix office, everything was organized in the Phoenix office, then was approved by the U.S. attorney in the Phoenix area, and then went to the Department of Justice--not to the head of ATF--but to the Department of Justice, to DOJ and their leadership, to be approved.

It is essential that we know what was done there and who did it in the process. So this is not some ancillary thing that's added to it. This is an important part of this process.

Now, there's all this obfuscation to say it's Bush's fault, this is political, there's not enough witnesses. The essence of this particular contempt deals with the documents that, on February 4 of last year, the Department of Justice sent us a letter that said they had no idea about this. And then by December, after all yearlong saying, No, we didn't know, we didn't know, we didn't know, come back in December and say, Oops, we did. It is what Eric Holder has called his evolving truth.

We want to know the facts of how it started here and went here. There's 130,000 documents that they say they have. They have turned over a little over 7,000 of those documents. This is not the prerogative for them to continue to hold and conceal those documents.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LANKFORD. Fast and Furious has moved to slow and tedious. We have got to have those documents to be able to finish up this investigation. It should have long since been done.

Eric Holder told our chairman that he has these documents, but he's using the documents as a bargaining chip to get a better deal. This is not the prerogative when we have a subpoena.

We are not looking for some conflict with the administration. We're looking to get to the facts.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source