Newly released emails show Attorney General Eric Holder said that Justice Department prosecutors who were critical of the department's handling of the fallout of the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal could 'kiss my ass.'

Fast and Furious was a botched effort by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to track firearms across the Southwest border.

Revelations about it created a political firestorm, leading to congressional investigations and turnover within the ATF and Justice Department.

Newly released emails show Holder said that prosecutors who were critical of the department's handling of the fallout of the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal could 'kiss my ass'

The Justice Department provided a batch of emails to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The Associated Press obtained the emails on Friday.

House Republicans, who have subpoenaed for thousands of emails and went to federal court for access to the documents, have long promoted the idea that Holder knew that federal agents had engaged in a risky tactic known as 'gun-walking.'

The Justice Department's inspector general found no evidence that Holder was aware of the tactic, in which ATF agents tried to track the flow of illegal guns from the United States into Mexico but instead lost track of many of the weapons.

In one email from March 2011, after being sent a news story about the Fast and Furious investigation, Holder told staff, 'I hope there is another side to the story.'

FAST AND FURIOUS AND DEADLY: 'Operation Fast and Furious' involved straw-buyers who sent 2,000 gus to Mexico with help from the ATF, which hoped to track the firearms to drug cartels – but failed

Later, after the ATF deputy director told Holder aides that 'we did not allow guns to walk,' Holder responded to staff with, 'Do they really, really know?'

That August, Holder was told by staff that a group of U.S. attorneys was upset that the resignation of Dennis Burke, then the U.S. attorney in Arizona, was announced simultaneously with the reassignment of ATF Acting Director Ken Melson.

Holder replied, 'Some people can kiss my ass.'

In another 2011 email Holder vented to colleagues about GOP congressional investigator Darrell Issa 'and his idiot cronies.'

The angry remark appears in an email Holder sent to his top deputies at the Justice Department, calling out the chair of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

One was the murder weapon that killed U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in December 2010.

The Holder email was part of a massive document dump that the Justice Department released on Election Day as Americans were occupied with voting and watching, breath-bated, for results.

'ISSA AND HIS IDIOT CRONIES': The depths of outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder's hatred for Republican House oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa slipped out in an email just released

Little media coverage attended the cache, which amounted to 64,280 pages. The DOJ had refused to turn over those documents, and more, since Issa's committee subpoenaed them in October 2011.

Holder was later held in criminal Contempt of Congress for refusing, making him the only presidential cabinet member in U.S. history to wear that badge of dishonor.

In the April 15, 2011 email, Holder was responding to threats from Issa's committee staffers that they would issue subpoenas to force gun dealers – Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) in government-speak – to tell what they knew.

One FFL's attorney shared the back-and-forth with the Justice Department. Matthew Axelrod, then the Associate Deputy Attorney General in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General,described the situation in an email whose subject line was 'Possible subpoena for cooperating FFL.'

His attorney, Axelrod wrote, had 'told Issa’s staff that his client has a variety of concerns with testifying, including the fact that he is a witness in a criminal matter and concerns for his safety.'

ISSA ON THE WARPATH: Rep. Darrell Issa (right) presides over the powerful House Oversight Committee, which has dragged Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) officials to Capitol Hill to account for the scandal

Committee staffers, he added, 'told him that it would be easier to keep this confidential if he was willing to come in for a voluntary interview. Counsel said that his client didn’t want to.'

After Axelrod outlined the possibility that Issa might issue a subpoena forcing the gun dealer to testify, Holder's then-chief of staff Gary Grindler reached up the chain of command.

'This keeps escalating,' he emailed Holder.

That's when his boss lost patience.

'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,' he fumed in an email to Grindler, Deputy AG James Cole, and Cole's chief of staff Stuart Goldberg.

'All they want to do – in reality – is cripple ATF and suck up to the gun lobby. Politics at its worst – maybe the media will get it.'

Fast and Furious weapons had already been turning up at the scenes of Mexican gun crimes before Terry, the border patrol agent, was murdered.

REST IN PEACE: A Mexican national killed US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry with a gun that the Obama administration's Justice Department allowed a straw-buyer to traffick south of the border

NO CHOICE: ATF agents leaned on gun dealers in the American southwest to sell guns illegally in order to supply hte Fast and Furious program with weapons that could be sent into Mexico

Issa's investigation has uncovered evidence that a year before Holder's angry email outburst, some in the ATF sought to use the Fast and Furious program to build a case for a new gun control measure known inside the government as 'Demand Letter 3.'

That plan was drawn up in order to use sales records from Fast and Furious-related purchases of large numbers of so-called 'long guns' – rifles and shotguns designed to be fired while braced against the shooter's shoulder – to force gun dealers everywhere to report the details of more of their sales to the federal government.

It was so named because it was the third proposed regulation of its kind,

In one July 14, 2010 email the Oversight Committee has released, ATF Field Operations Assistant Director Mark Chait asked Bill Newell, ATF's Phoenix Special Agent in Charge, for help leveraging data from Fast and Furious.

'Bill – can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same FFL and at one time?' he asked. 'We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales.'

The massive tranche of emails released Tuesday, while the news media's attention was fixed on election maps and poling-place results, were brought about by a series of events primed by a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Judicial Watch, the center-right watchdog group famous for wringing incriminating paperwork out of secretive bureaucracies.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the Holder email criticizing Rep. Issa.

After the DOJ refused to comply with the FOIA request, a federal judge ordered the government to release a 'Vaughn Index,' a specialized inventory of all the documents it was withholding coupled with a rationale for each.

Many of those reasons seemed specious to the judge, who then ordered a similar disclosure to Issa's committee.

MAN IN CHARGE? Then-Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler was Holder's point man on the 'gun-walking' debacle

The Justice Department, which has not commented on the Election Day document dump, chose to voluntarily release everything on Tuesday rather than face a judge's order to do it on a slow news day.

The flood of documents that reached Capitol Hill, the Oversight Committee claimed in a press release, 'is an admission that the Justice Department never had legitimate grounds to withhold these documents in the first place.'

'Approximately two-thirds of the universe of documents that the Justice Department withheld from Congress has now been shown to be well outside the scope of Executive Privilege.'

Issa said in a statement that '[w]hen Eric Holder wants to know why he was the first Attorney General held in criminal contempt of Congress, he can read the judge’s order that compelled the production of 64,280 pages that he and President Obama illegitimately and illegally withheld from Congress.'