After six years of legal wrangling, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has reached a settlement with the Department of Justice in their dispute over the release of documents related to the controversial “gun-walking” program known as Operation Fast and Furious.

Beginning in November of 2009, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives used straw purchasers to pass guns to suspected criminals, hoping to track the firearms as they were moved into Mexico and possibly to the members of drug cartels.

According to a later report by the Department of Justice inspector general, 2,000 firearms were illegally purchased for $1.5 million, including two weapons that were recovered in the Arizona desert near the scene where Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was shot and killed.

As Congress investigated, President Obama claimed executive privilege over tens of thousands of pages of Justice Department documents related to Fast and Furious. The House of Representatives voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over the documents and also authorized a lawsuit against him to force their release.

In 2014, a U.S. District Court rejected the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case, but also rejected the committee’s contention that executive privilege can’t extend to the records of government agencies.

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Newsom should sign bill granting civilian oversight of sheriff’s departments The settlement calls for the Justice Department to release the withheld documents and conduct a new search of government files to look for more. But it also states that “the Executive Branch of the United States Government continues to disagree” with the District Court’s holding that the committee could bring a lawsuit over the issue. The parties agreed that the court’s rulings “should not in any way control the resolution of the same or similar issues should they arise in other litigation between the Committee and the Executive Branch.”

That’s a recognition that this lawsuit might have ended in a broader ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on whether the executive branch has the authority to withhold information from the U.S. Congress at all.

There isn’t a word about executive privilege in the Constitution. On the contrary, the founding document gives Congress the power to impeach all civil officers of the United States and, by inference, to investigate them.

That’s a fight that may be down the road.