By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
In a blistering two-page letter, Congressman Darrell Issa has advised embattled Attorney General Eric Holder that the decision by Patrick J. Cunningham to invoke his Fifth Amendment right and not testify about Operation Fast and Furious “is a major escalation of the (Justice) Department’s culpability” in the year-long gun trafficking scandal.
Cunningham, chief of the Criminal Division in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix, AZ, exercised his privilege against self-incrimination on Jan. 24. Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, subsequently warned Holder that, “the Committee will be making further document requests of the Department.”
Holder is scheduled to testify before the Oversight Committee on Thursday, Feb. 2.
“I expect nothing less than the Department’s full and complete compliance with these requests,” Issa wrote.
TGM obtained a copy of the Jan. 24 letter, which noted that the Justice Department has “denied any wrongdoing in Fast and Furious and its response to the congressional investigation.”
“Yet,” Issa wrote, “a senior Department official recently indicated that Mr. Cunningham misrepresented the facts of Fast and Furious as the Department prepared its initial response to the congressional inquiry. Senior Justice Department officials point to Cunningham as having significant responsibility for providing this false information, in addition to approving the reckless tactics used in Fast and Furious.”
Cunningham’s attorney, Tobin J. Romero, disputes the allegations against his client.
The decision by Cunningham to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege marks the first time in the year-long investigation that anyone has taken this step. It drew bitter criticism within the gun rights community, and from congressional observers, who reason that a Justice Department employee should provide facts, rather than avoid them.
“Without Mr. Cunningham’s testimony,” Issa wrote, “it will be difficult to gauge the veracity of some of the Department’s claims. Main Justice has chosen to blame the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona, and senior officials in the U.S. Attorney’s Office have rejected this accusation. This tension renews doubts about the Department’s management of the Fast and Furious scandal.”
There has long been the feeling among those close to the investigation that the Justice Department is stonewalling the investigations mounted by Issa and by Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley early in 2011. On more than one occasion, requested documents delivered by the Justice Department to Issa’s committee have been so heavily redacted as to be worthless. Some pages have been entirely blacked out.
Even more curious, as Issa observed during a December hearing on the case by the House Judiciary Committee, is that in all of the e-mail exchanges, there was not a single one that had Holder’s e-mail address. It was during that hearing that Holder told the committee he would not provide any documents dated after Feb. 4, 2011. Issa, in his letter, called that “an arbitrary deadline you created to minimize the public fallout over the Department’s cover-up.”
“Members of the (Oversight) Committee look forward to your…testimony,” Issa’s letter concluded. “It is now incumbent on you to finally take responsibility for this Justice Department scandal and the clear management failure that occurred on your watch.”
