general seems to think, complying with the committee's subpoena is not optional. the failure to produce documents pursuant to a congressional subpoena is a violation of federal law. still, the attorney general refuses to give the committee even a list of documents he is withholding from us let alone to give us access to all of the documents covered by the subpoena. so it is fair to say that we don't know what we don't know. again, i say this is the problem of evolving truth. on the other hand, the committee has gone to great lengths to accommodate the department's interest as an agency of the executive branch. the committee has made a series of accommodations in an effort to avoid today's vote. citizens in my district are wondering why we have been so gracious in the time length that we have pursued this fast and furious issue. we agreed to view documents

documentsen camera and done volunteer interviews instead of depositions and clarified and prioritized the scope of the subpoena among other things. the department has not seen cited any legal authority as the basis for withholding documents covered by this subpoena. nor has it asserted any privilege over the documents. it seems we are out of options. the attorney general has not produced one single document since the day's vote was announced and has put an impossible compromise on the table that takes us out of the running with no efforts on our part that would be sound and solid. that's unprecedented. i believe it reflects the low level of commitment the attorney general has to cooperating with this committee a separate and

co-equal branch of government. i urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me today in voting in favor of the contempt resolution unless and until something more positive and concrete it brought before us to deal with. this is not what we should have been forced into even considering today. this is not what i believe any member on this side wants to see this come to but rather this has been brought about by the actions or should i say the inactions of an attorney general and his office in carrying on evolving truth, and i yield back. >> gentleman yields back. anyone else seek recognition? the general from massachusetts is recognized for five minutes. >> i yield 30 seconds to many my colleague from new york, ms. maloney. >> i thank the gentleman yielding for a point of clarification. i want to make sure the record reflects that the attorney

general and his offer last night was an effort to fully satisfy the committee's last outstanding information request and not to end the investigation and i ask unanimous consent to place in the record his comments made on this matter after that publicly. >> i object. the ultimately the individuals that were in the meeting have asserted their view of what he said. if the attorney general wants to give us in writing something, i will agree to put it in the record as soon as it arrives. >> reclaiming my time if i might. you know, this at one time had been a legitimate investigation, something this committee should do and we have generally done in the past with consent of all parties on both sides of the aisle. it is painful to sit here and watch it turn into a partisan political theater and unnecessary that it move in that direction. we made a promise to the terry

family we would identify what went wrong anden sure it didn't happen again. we have gone a long way in identifying what went wrong, and i think that's something we can all be proud of or at least that we did our job. somebody mentioned earlier patience, the patience that the committee had gone on this, and i do want to say some 7,600 documents have been provided to the he can. they showed is began in the field division of the atf in 2006 and that senior officials in the department of justice didn't know this tactic was used in operation fast and furious until 2011. there were four of these operations, three of them happened on the previous administration. we asked that the attorney general mccasy be allowed to testify because he was briefed on the matter and he was not allowed to testify. there are other people at the atf who were going to testify this administration, the attorney general and others above had not been informed and he wasn't allowed to testify, yet this committee then issued a

subpoena and it wanted information that it was illegal for the attorney general to share that would have compromised on going criminal prosecutions in investigations and wanted information prohibited from disclosure by federal law and currently under seal by a federal judge and wanted 9 production of grand jury documents and other federal law things prohibited for the attorney general to turnover and wanted documents related to active and on going criminal investigations that would jeopardize those prosecutions and it wanted detailed information related to confidential inform ants, highly sensitive information that woulden danger the lives and the lives of their families and that's the patience people were seeking the documents that never should have been produced and it wasn't until friday night the chairman finally recognized this was unprecedented and contrary to the rule of law and withdrew those requirements. then he came and moved the goal post and a whole new updated citation and now we're looking at what's left to fight over here. apparently we're left to fight about an explanation of how the department came to learn that the original denial that this

gun walking occurred was inaccurate which it now acknowledge and had why they later changed course and admitted the error. there was nothing about how gun walking happened and how it is going to be re formed. that's what we promised the family to i understand too out how it happened which we have done and then we promised reform which we're not doing. when we tried to do that we can recall during the hearings there was an effort made to question witnesses about the failure of the current laws to combat gun trafficking and the chairman cut the questions off. specifically told the agents not to answer those questions. said it was outside the scope of the hearing and wouldn't be considered valid testimony, and so it seems to me we took reform off the table before we got started. i think that's an injustice to the committee's work and more particularly to the family and the american public on that. this is a narrow set of new objects this committee is apparently after from the attorney general. he has said that he will provide those documents that he can and that he will work with the

committee on that. there is a duty in the constitution to accommodate each other, the executive branch and the legislative branch. seems to me that since the goal posts have been moved again, since the chairman is wrong in so many earlier matter that is you sought and now agrees he cannot and should not get, that there could be an accommodation made to commit to good faith and all the attorney general asked for was he commit to a good faith conclusion of the contempt hearings and if produced the documents and explanations that went on. i would just hope we would get back to a sense of what this committee is about and accept the accommodation for now and you don't lose your chance to go after contempt if it doesn't work and pivot and have the committee do the rest of its job. with he have done the oversight part and know what happened and do the reform part and make sure it doesn't happen again. >> gentleman yield. >> four seconds, go ahead. >> i ask unanimous consent the gentleman have an additional 30 seconds. would the gentleman yield. pursuant to the statement that you referred to about attorney general michael mccasy, it has

now been retracted from the testimony of attorney general eric holder where he claimed that his predecessor then attorney general mccase i had been briefed about gun walking in operation and now the department is retracting that statement and claiming holder inadvertently made the claim to the committee. >> i re claim my time. it would be wonderful if he came in here as a witness and found out what the actual matters were and facts were. we shouldn't be predetermining them. the idea of asking for evidence testimony is to find out what it was. no reason he shouldn't be allowed to testify about who knew what, when and where. we're not afraid to have the information come out. we just want the people to testify. now moving on and knowing what happened in this case, let's do the rest of the job. let's get the reform. >> i appreciate the gentleman. i might note that kenneth nelson testified for two days before this committee and may well be back before the committee in the

future. the gentleman from -- do you seek recognition. >> eric holder has failed to meet his obligation pursuant to the subpoena issued him by this committee. we promised we would get to the bottom of this matter for brian terry's family and the american people and make sure this type of operation never occurs again, that we would find out the facts, the information, reform the system based on the information. many republicans and democrats on this committee demanded to know the facts and answers about this case a year ago when all of this started. what started as a pursuit of facts has now turned into aslow crawl of evidence, requests and delay. we cannot look at the evidence if the department of justice refuses to turnover those facts. internally they reviewed 80,000 documents. they have actually turned over to our committee 7,000.

i have no doubt that if the department of justice subpoenaed document from someone, they would not patiently wait seven months for those documents to be produced. no u.s. attorney would allow someone to review their own documents until doj what they think is relevant or to do this, i will just brief the attorney on what those documents might include rather than turn the documents over. no u.s. attorney would go for that deal. yesterday attorney general holder admitted that he had additional documents consistent with our subpoena request but instead of turning those documents over, he tried to use them as a bargaining chip to control this investigation. it begs the question, what is in those internal documents that the department of justice so self incriminating that the d o.j. would with not release them? why would they rather use them as a negotiating tool? prior to today we have not had a request for executive privilege. now it is asserted apparently

the president is requesting executive privilege. we assume that the presidential executive privilege request only involves his kmuk deliberations so prior to today we weren't aware the president was engaged in the deliberations in response to the actions after the february 4th. what we requested. the reason we are even interested in these documents is the department of justice gave congress a false statement february the 4th of 2011, about d o.j.'s knowledge of fast and furious yx. december the 10th brian terry was killed with two of more than 2,000 guns allowed to walk into the hands of known or suspected criminals. february the 4th of 2011 department of justice sent a letter to congress in which they stated the allegation that atf sanctioned or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to purchaser who is then transported them to mexico is false. atf makes every effort to interdict weapons purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to mexico. we know that multiple people were involved in the drafting of

this letter and we know their statement was false. march the 22nd of 2011 the president spoke to univision and said there may be a situation here where serious mistakes were made. if that's the case, we will find out and we will hold someone accountable. may the 2nd of 2011 they did nt knowingly permit purchasers to take guns into mexico and carefully worded statement to state something we now know is false. so one month doj said they're false the next month the president to a reporter appeared to state there may be a situation in which serious mistakes were made and two months later doj again tells congress they didn't permit the straw purchasers to move into mexico all to be flipped again in december of 2011 when the d.oj, the deputy attorney general acknowledged the february 4th letter contained inaccuracies. listen, we need to answer the

following questions. who authorized this action? who was in charge of the oversight of the operation? why were they allowed to continue? who will be held responsible for misconduct? when the department of justice refuses to provide these answers the house of representatives is forced to collect them. this committee was united together to walk through the process with atf. now that it is with doj, this committee seems to be separating off and saying atf was okay to investigate but we shouldn't investigate inaccurate statements from doj. why is this important? on a multiple level, truth and ver ras at this is essential in government. the doj is currently in an investigation dealing with security leaks and this same doj will release a report in some future day that we also have to trust is accurate. i urge my colleagues to move forward with the contempt. we need this information.

we have to get this out both for the terry family and to get a full accounting of what has occurred and when it occurred and by whom so we can hold people to account. with that i yield back. >> i thank the gentleman. gentleman from missouri is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. you know, we in congress and especially those of us who serve on this committee can get pretty passionate about our responsibilities. we take our duties seriously which we should. when that passion increases to fervor, however, our interests in overseeing the federal government can sometimes get the better of us. we can become so focused on what we originally wanted that we can lose sight of the point of our inquiry, and we have all experienced, i am sure, how our staff can sometimes become overzealous in their attempts to help us do our jobs. when we take the time to

investigate an allegation and we spend money examining the issue, naturally we want to see results. we want to get to the bottom of the problem. of course we often feel the need to show that we are not wasting our time or the taxpayer's resources, but the test of leadership is not about sticking to the plan no matter how badly it goes wrong. it isn't about seeing something through even though it is clearly a failure. successful leaders reand when it is time to give up a plainly incorrect theory and when it is time to admit one was wrong. i was encouraged when the majority correctly significantly narrowed the scope of the

documents they demanded of the justice department. it would have been illegal for the department to produce wiretap applications, grand jury testimony and information about confidential informants. however, when one starts out with the presumption of guilt of a coverup as the majority did when they began this investigation, it is extremely difficult to admit when one is proven wrong. that's how this began, with the presumption of guilt on the part of the administration and in particular on the part of the attorney general. not because of any evidence of wrongdoing, not because of any facts that would warrant such an aggressive and partisan investigation, but because the majority came into this congress accusing the president of being, and i quote, the most corrupt

president in history. they majestically promised seven investigatory hearings a week. they predicted scandal after scandal after scandal would be uncovered and examined and confirmed, and one by one the majority held hearings on these so-called scandals, and one by one these so-called scandals turned out to be anything but that. grants weren't politicized, waivers weren't granted inappropriately. regulations were not job killing. government employees were not creating deficits. the nlrb was not a rogue agent, and the administration really is for all of the above energy policy, but the one charge, the one allegation, the one so-called scandal that seemed to take hold at least in the press that is favorable to the majority was fast and furious

with sensational charges, reckless accusations and by exploiting a tragedy the majority tried to create the scandal they were looking for. they put all of their efforts into making this the smoking gun that would once and for all prove the chairman's initial charge of a corrupt, no, the most corrupt president in our history, but in hearing after hearing we have learned the opposite. we have learned that the operation began in the bush administration and that attorney general holder ended it. we have learned that the justice department was not improperly withholding documents but in fact were properly safe guarding our documents according to the law. we have learned that instead of the wrongdoing of the corruption, of the coverup, that the majority had promised to deliver, there was nothing of

the sort on the part of the attorney general and so of after being brought to this blind alley we come to a decision point. will the majority admit or even accept they were wrong and will they reevaluate will they truly lead this committee and i was encouraged by the narrow scope of the documents being demanded and that was a good first step towards bringing us out of this alley, and i urge this committee to continue the reevaluation of what clearly turned out to be in fact not a scandal and not a coverup, and i urge my colleagues to reject this citation. >> i thank the gentleman. who else seeks recognition? the general lady from new york is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you on behalf of this committee for your efforts to really do due diligence and to get us to the point where we're ensuring that officials are held

accountable for the irresponsible tactics used in this very flawed operation which resulted in the death of brian terry. brian terry's been dead over 500 days now and still no one has been held accountable and so it is with disappointment and gravity that this committee sits here, and i sit here to hold someone accountable for what has happened. i'd like to read off of the website and the ogr website, and i quote the responsibility is to hold government accountable to the taxpayers. we will work tirelessly to deliver the facts to the american people and to bring genuine reform to the federal bureaucracy. that is what we are charged to do as a committee and very, unfortunatery, this administration, this department

of justice has failed to provide this committee with the information and with the documents that we need to be accountable to the american people. my district is thousands of miles away from where this occurred and yet the people in my district asked over and over again who isn't responsible for this flawed operation? who are you going to hold accountable for death of brian terry as well as hundreds of mexicans? we owe this answer to the american people. that is what this committee is charged to do. the terry family sat in this very room and we pledged to them that we would hold someone accountable for the death of their son, their brother, their cousin. that is what this committee is charged to do and that is what we have a responsibility to do. throughout this investigation, the attorney general's actions have been reprehensible. he's been callous toward the victim's family and the accurate

information he's provided to congress and he's not taken responsibility for his role. he's dodged difficult questions, if he wanted to provide the documents he would have done so already and we have given him time and he has failed to do it. in addition to the attorney general stonewalling this committee we now have the president threatening to revoke the executive privilege. leaders must lead. they must take responsibility for the good and the bad. and that is what this committee is seeking to find. who is responsible for the death of a border patrol agent? the lack of transparency with respect to a dead border patrol agent is sickening and this morning's threat of asserting executive privilege to maintain the vow of secrecy is even more sickening. our mission in this committee is to shed light on government activity so that the american people know what their government is doing.

my children, mr. chairman is what is being withheld from us. why is the department of justice stonewalling this investigation? we must, as a committee and i personally want to know what is he hiding? were there more guns that walked? were there more mexican gangs that were implicated? were there more board patrol agents that were silenced, or hurt or even killed? we want to know answers, the american people deserve answers and most importantly the family of brian terry deserves those answers. i yield back my time. >> does anyone else seek recognition? >> the gentleman from virginia is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i think this is a sad moment for this committee and for the congress.

some might be forgiven for describing the proceedings today as akin to a kangaroo court. are the elements of a kangaroo court? first of all, the verdict is decided in advance. and thefacts and the process are modified to fit that verdict that's already been arrived at. kangaroo court process involves the distortion of facts and the select filtering out of fact, controlling testimony, controlling what is available to the court in making sure that verdict that'sa, rived at in advance is arrived at softening

up the intended defendant by name calling, by badgering, by insin situation, by character assassination, by name calling. o all of that one might say, is this a genuine attempt to make sure that the terry family had closure we'd have an open investigation. we'd make sure the previous administrations, wide receiver program that was the antecedent of fast and furious was thoroughly examined here on a bipartisan basis and then the previous attorney general was called as a witness to answer simply the questions of what he knew and when he knew it. a conscious and deliberate effort has been made here to make sure such testimony is not

ever heard. when you exclude legitimate avenues of inquiry, it is for a purpose and it is for a purpose to make sure that verdict in advance is arrived at. nowhere have we had a hearing on whether or not our gun laws are sufficient at the southern part of our border to address the overwhelming flow of weapons to the united states from mexico. i went to mexico, what's the one thing our country can do to help you, we were somewhat surprised by his answer. his answer was reinstate the assault weapons ban. but if your intent is to make sure it's political and to make sure that substantively we don't ever talk about guns in that sense, then you actually warn a

witness who dares to go a stray in response to a question in saying an atf witness that we need to have gun control enforcement. we need stronger consequences when those laws are violated. what we never had a hearing about in talking about atf. atf hasn't had a permanent director in six years. why? political obstruction in the other body because they don't want -- they don't want tough gun enforcement. they want weak leadership. so, yes, we're brought to this moment to believe that this is all about really a rogue attorney general who is uncooperative with this branch of government and he needs to be reasoned in and the ultimate penalty we have besides impeachment, content for the

first time ever needs to be meted out to a man who is seen as an honorable man who has put himself into this job, who is fighting all kinds of things on our behalf from voter suppression to, yes, the drug cartels in the south and we are going demean him. we are going to tarnish his reputation and that's how we get to the president of the united states. and you can forgive the public for the contempt that this body has held poll after poll when we behaved this way when we could have behaved this way and gotten so much more done. i yield back. the gentleman yields back. who with else seeks recognition? the gentleman from pennsylvania is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman.

i certainly appreciate the sentiments from the gentleman from virginia, i assure you there's nothing kangaroo about the death of a border agent. this is a very sad day, and i take this responsibility very, very seriously, and i think i take the conduct of this committee very seriously. i try to approach it as i would as a former united states attorney and the position that i had and i'm looking at the facts. i think i know from the beginning of the facts that gun locking occurred and we know the gun locking is the direct violations of the policies of the atf. we know an agent was shot and killed and left to bleed out in a desert shot with one of those guns that was part of that process. we know that atf originally denied that this occurred and it was only in the process of that that we began to see the efforts of certain