Obama asserts executive privilege and backs Holder over Fast and Furious

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/20/obama-executive-privilege-eric-holder

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Barack Obama deployed his executive privilege power for the first time since taking office in a showdown with a Republican-led congressional committee investigating a botched arms smuggling operation.

Obama's move came as the House oversight committee was meeting on Wednesday to vote on whether to declare the attorney-general Eric Holder to be in contempt of Congress. Republicans on the committee accuse him of contempt for failing to hand over documents relating to the Mexican arms fiasco.

The scene is now set for a protracted struggle between the Obama administration and House Republicans over Holder's future, one that could yet end up in court. If it gets as far as the courts, it is likely a judge would throw it out: it is rare for a judge to ignore executive privilege.

The oversight committee chairman, Republican Darrell Issa, who has been pressing hard on the case for more than a year, had issued a subpoena demanding the justice department hand over a futher batch of documents relating to the case.

But, just minutes before the committee gathered to discuss the vote, Obama asserted executive privilege to withhold the documents.

Issa called the move an "untimely" assertion of the privilege, which has been asserted just 25 times since 1980.

The case centres round the drugs operation known as Fast and Furious, in which US agents turned a blind eye to arms being smuggled across the Mexican border. The agents had set up the sting operation in the hope they could trace the smuggled guns to high-ranking traffickers linked to drugs cartels.

But agents from the bureau of alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives in Arizona, lost track of more than 1,000 weapons. Two of the weapons turned up at the scene of the killing of US border patrol agent Brian Terry.

George Bush's administration used executive privilege half-a-dozen times, including to protect then vice-president Dick Cheney and senior adviser Karl Rove, and was heavily criticised by the Democrats for doing so. Democrats accused the Bush administration of abusing the executive privilege power.

The Obama administration until now had resisted following suit.

Buck Brendan, a spokesman for the Republican House speaker John Boehner, suggested that the Obama decision moved the row from just involving Holder to enveloping the White House.

"Until now, everyone believed that the decisions regarding Fast and Furious were confined to the department of justice. The White House decision to invoke executive privilege implies that White House officials were either involved in the Fast and Furious operation, or the cover-up that followed," Brendan said.

"The administration has always insisted that wasn't the case. Were they lying, or are they now bending the law to hide the truth?"

The Republican case is that Holder misled Congress last year when he said he was unaware of Fast and Furious, but documents released later showed he had been briefed on it.

The justice department tried to explain the discrepancy by claiming Holder had misunderstood the original question.

The Obama administration view is that it has already released to the House committee all the documents directly related to Fast and Furious and that the subpoena is a fishing expedition, applying not to the operation but the response of Holder and other officials to it.

Holder met Issa on Tuesday and offered to hand over the requested documents in return for an assurance that this would end the dispute. Issa rejected the offer, prompting Holder to accuse Issa of political gamesmanship.

Elijah Cummings, the most senior Democrat on the committee, accused his Republican colleagues on Wednesday of not wanting a solution, saying the justice department had already provided thousands of documents.