'Fast and Furious' docs released

The Department of Justice has turned over nearly 65,000 pages of documents on the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the panel announced Tuesday.

The documents, long desired by Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), include material the Obama administration previously argued was unreleasable as it was covered by executive privilege. But earlier this year, a federal judge ultimately compelled the DOJ to send the documents to Congress.


Issa said obtaining the documents was a “victory for the legislative branch” but insisted he would continue his campaign against the DOJ and Attorney General Eric Holder as the panel is still missing material Congress has requested.

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“Since these pages still do not represent the entire universe of the documents the House of Representatives is seeking related to the Justice Department’s cover-up of the botched gun-walking scandal that contributed to the death of a Border Patrol agent, our court case will continue,” Issa said in a statement.

Issa also said he was “deeply concerned” that the DOJ overly redacted some of the documents included in the release. In a cover letter accompanying the documents — made public by the Oversight Committee — the DOJ said tight time constraintsto provide the documents may have “resulted in more redactions than the department ultimately will want to press in this case.”

The tens thousands of pages of documents released to the House late Monday include an email exchange between Holder and his wife as well as an exchange between Holder and White House adviser Valerie Jarrett.

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Jarrett’s email discussion with Holder appears to have been a morale-boosting effort at a time when press reports suggested he’d received updates on Operation Fast and Furious notwithstanding his statements to the contrary.

“I’m sorry,” Jarrett wrote to Holder on October 4, 2011.

“Time to go to the mattresses. Ready for the fight. Will send some of our stuff. All I have are the facts,” Holder replied, signing the message simply, “E.”

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“Facts always work,” Jarrett responded.

Holder’s emails on the subject also include some frank criticism of Issa.

“Issa and his idiot cronies never gave a damn about this when all that was happening was that thousands of Mexicans were being killed with guns from our country. All they want to do- in reality- is cripple ATF and suck up to the gun lobby,” Holder wrote to three of his top aides on April 15, 2011. “Politics at its worst- maybe the media will get it.”

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A person familiar with the exchanges between Holder and his wife, Sharon Malone, said that one involves Malone forwarding a news article related to the case. In the email thread, the couple went on to discuss family matters not related to the Fast and Furious investigation.

In another, former DOJ official Robert Raben shared public relations strategy with Malone, who forwarded the advice to Holder, the source said.

A DOJ spokesman said officials hope the disclosure can help settle the litigation over Fast-and-Furious-related records.

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“We have long been willing to provide many of these materials voluntarily in order to resolve this matter outside of court, and believe that producing them now should bring us a big step closer to concluding this litigation once and for all,” spokesman Brian Fallon said.

The House voted in 2012 to hold Holder in contempt largely over the Obama administration’s claim that it did not need to release a trove of documents on the gunrunning program. Holder is set to retire by early 2015.

The DOJ delivered the material to the panel on Monday.

In response to the House-filed lawsuit, DOJ maintained that it had the legal right to withhold all materials relating to how it handled congressional and media inquiries about Fast and Furious.

However, before the suit was filed, DOJ turned over some records about the preparation of a letter about the gun trafficking operation that turned out to be inaccurate.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the DOJ had no authority to withhold records unless they were deliberative in nature and were prepared prior to some relevant official decision. DOJ officials asked the judge to stay her ruling so they they could appeal it at the end of the case, but the judge declined to do so.