众议院投票，以保持司法部长埃里克霍尔德蔑视

The House of Representatives voted Thursday to make 埃里克·ħ. Jr的持有人. the first sitting attorney general held in contempt of Congress in U.S. history after he withheld documents that Republican lawmakers demanded as part of an investigation into a flawed gunrunning operation.

The vote — 255 到 67, 与 108 Democrats abstaining — capped weeks of partisan sniping over Holder’s decision not to turn over a set of documents that lawmakers had sought as part of their 18-month-long probe into “Fast and Furious,” as the case was known.

As part of the operation, run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, agents watched as more than 2,000 guns hit the streets. Two guns tied to the operation were found at the scene of the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

在一份声明中, 持有人所描述的表决为“什么成为一个被误导的遗憾高潮 - 和政治动机 - 在大选之年的调查”，他指责共和党领导重点调查“对政治对公众安全。”

众议院议长约翰一. 博纳 (的R -俄亥俄) 有争议的这种指责.

“我不掉以轻心，并, 坦率地说, 希望它永远不会来这,“他从楼楼说，在投票前. “这房子是集中在就业和经济. 但司法部可以凌驾于法律之上, 无司法部是超越宪法, 其中我们每个人都曾宣誓宣誓维护。“

虽然共和党主导的众议院被广泛预计将批准持有人, it’s not clear whether the vote will get Republicans the documents they had requested. In the coming days, lawmakers will press to have criminal charges filed against the attorney general. But the decision of whether to do so will be made by the U.S. attorney for the District, 罗纳德Ç. Machen Jr., who ultimately reports to Holder.

The House also voted Thursday to authorize civil action against Holder, a move that paves the way for a federal court challenge to President Obama’s decision to invoke executive privilege over some of the documents being sought.

For Republicans, 然而, the citation served as a symbolic blow to the nation’s highest law enforcement officer, 谁, by some accounts, is the first sitting Cabinet member to ever have been held in contempt of Congress.

Before the vote, several Democrats walked off the House floor to protest what they characterized as an investigation, backed by the National Rifle Association, to embarrass Holder and the White House.

Led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-加州。) and House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), 关于 100 members exited through the main center door of the House floor and then walked solemnly and silently down the front steps of the U.S. Capitol with television cameras rolling and tourists looking on.

Under the hot summer sun, member after member denounced the vote as a sham. “This is a terrible day for the House of Representatives,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. “We are declaring, by walking out, we are not participating.”

Hoyer then led the group in chanting: “Shame on you! Shame on you!“

Although most Democrats left before the vote, 17 sided with Republicans to hold Holder in contempt. Most of those Democrats are moderates who have been endorsed by the NRA, which said before the vote that it planned to track how members voted in determining endorsements.

The conflict that led to the contempt vote centered on a particular set of documents that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subpoenaed as part of its investigation into Fast and Furious.

Justice officials said they have cooperated with the investigation, turning over 7,600 documents relating to the gun operation and making several senior officials available to testify. Holder testified on the matter nine times on Capitol Hill over the past 14 个月.

But the committee’s chairman, 代表. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), insisted that Holder and his aides were stonewalling his probe.

“Claims by the Justice Department that it has fully cooperated with this investigation fall at odds with its conduct: issuing false denials to Congress when senior officials clearly knew about gunwalking, directing witnesses not to answer entire categories of questions, retaliating against whistleblowers, and providing only 7,600 documents while withholding over 100,000,” Issa said in a statement.

上周四, Issa led Republicans through hours of contentious debate with Democrats, at one point standing at a lectern with a large photo of Brian Terry, the border agent who was killed in December 2010, by his side. As he recounted his committee’s efforts to obtain documents from the Justice Department, he waved a ream of papers in his hands and then, for emphasis, dropped them to the floor with a loud thud.

Fast and Furious, named after the popular movie series, 是 run out of the ATF’s Phoenix division, with the legal backing of the U.S. attorney there. Agents did not interdict weapons they suspected of being purchased at Arizona gun shops by illegal buyers known as “straw purchasers.” Instead, they planned on tracking them through the pipelines being used to deliver firearms to a Mexican drug cartel.

去年, a Justice Department official told lawmakers in a letter that the ATF had not ever “sanctioned” or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser who then transported them into Mexico. Ten months later, the Justice Department withdrew the letter, acknowledging the botched operation.

That episode heightened suspicions among Republican lawmakers, who have demanded that the department hand over records of any deliberations it had about Fast and Furious between Feb. 4, 2011, when the letter was written, and December, when it was withdrawn.

Justice officials have insisted that no senior officials in the department knew the details of the operation and have noted that the ATF has overseen similar firearm-trafficking investigations, 包括在总统乔治·W·. 布什政府.

司法部历来拒绝按压行政部门官员指控在国会不齿, 根据罗纳德·里根总统执政期间准备了法律分析.

在五月 1984, 当时的助理总检察长西奥多乙. 奥尔森写道，中美. 律师不需要参考国会蔑视收费，一个大陪审团或起诉的行政官员“谁执行总统的指令调用总统的一个委员会前行政特权的索赔。”

七月 2007 二月 2008, 总检察长迈克尔·Mukasey列举了奥尔森的分析在信件众议院民主党领袖, 通知他们大法官拒绝控告员工白宫办公厅主任乔舒亚博尔顿和白宫法律顾问哈里特Ë. 迈尔斯, 未能通过众议院司法委员会面前出现后鄙视谁举行.

罗莎琳德S. Helderman和朱莉泰特促成了这一报告.

来源: 洗净后