Ranking member of the House Oversight Committee Democrat Elijah Cummings has released a statement calling the decision to subpoena Attorney General Eric Holder in order to gain information about Operation Fast and Furious a "political stunt" and "deep-sea expedition."
“As I have said all along, Fast and Furious was a terrible mistake with tragic consequences,” said Cummings. “The Committee is right to investigate what went wrong and why, but we must do so in a fair and responsible manner.”
“This subpoena is a deep-sea fishing expedition and a gross abuse of the Committee’s authority. It demands tens of thousands of pages of highly sensitive law enforcement and national security materials that have never been requested before and are completely unrelated to Operation Fast and Furious,” said Cummings. “Rather than legitimate fact-gathering, this looks more like a political stunt.”
If Eric Holder and his Justice Department would provide the necessary documents about Operation Furious, a subpoena wouldn't be necessary, but because Holder and the DOJ have done nothing but lie and stonewall Chairman Darrell Issa in his efforts to hold someone accountable for a lethal and irresponsible government program, a subpoena is the only way the American people will ever get the information they deserve about the program. Holder has a choice, he can come forward, dump all documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious on the table and start fixing things, or, he can continue to be uncooperative in getting to the bottom of this scandal. The response from Cummings isn't surprising, after all, this is the same man who thinks the answer to failed government is more government, that ATF should have even more power after deliberatly placing thousands of guns into the hands of ruthless drug cartels.
Today, democrats on the House Oversight Committee, led by Rep. Cummings, issued a report calling for more gun control in light of Operation Fast and Furious. Their solution to the Obama Justice Department’s Operation Fast and Furious scandal is to give the same officials who purposely broke U.S. federal law within the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) overseen by the Justice Department, even more power and control over American gun rights, stomping on the Second Amendment to defend government incompetency rather than placing responsibility on Washington bureaucrats.
Also, Cummings fails to mention Holder's testimony before Congress on May 3, 2011 when he claimed he had only known about Operation Fast and Furious "for a few weeks," yet multiple memos addressed directly to Holder are dated as early as July 5, 2010.