Recommending that Attorney General Eric Holder Be Found in Contempt of Congress
Floor Speech
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Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, the family of Brian Terry deserves our respect, our condolences and our best efforts to finish the mission, to put an end to gun violence on the southern border. But instead of going after gun violence, this investigation has gone after the man that tried to stop the gun violence, the Attorney General.
Chairman Issa has acknowledged that Attorney General Holder did not know about the gunwalking operation. He has acknowledged that the President and the White House did not know about the gunwalking operation. Both the White House and the Attorney General have acknowledged that the gunwalking operation was a tragic mistake, that it was badly executed, and that it originated under the Bush administration.
It was Attorney General Holder that terminated the program and requested an extensive investigation of the operation and how it was conducted. And the documents that they're now requesting in this ``vast and spurious'' investigation have absolutely nothing to do with gunwalking.
If they were really interested in discovering the truth, the committee would have called Kenneth Melson, head of the ATF, as a witness. The chairman refused 10 different requests for a hearing with Mr. Melson--10 requests.
Republicans have not granted one single Democratic witness request in 16 months. Not one.
This is not about discovering the truth. This is about politics. This has become an obsessive political vendetta, pursuing a political agenda in a season of unusually ugly politics.
If they were serious about ending gun violence, they would do what many ATF agents have suggested and put some teeth in the law; and that is why I authored, with my colleagues, a bill to make gun trafficking a Federal offense and strengthen penalties for straw purchases.
This unprecedented contempt citation is politics at its worst and why this body is held in such low esteem by the public now.
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