Authorizing Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to Initiate or Intervene in Judicial Proceedings to Enforce Certain Subpoenas

Floor Speech

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Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, it's amazing that people would say there's no evidence of a coverup when somebody says, No, we didn't do what we did, and then hides it for an additional 10 months. By any normal American standard, that would be a coverup.

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Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I'm not sure if I heard the gentleman right when he said that I ``silenced whistleblowers'' in order to keep them from talking about gun control.

Is the gentleman disparaging and falsely claiming that I did something that I know for a fact I did not?

Mr. CUMMINGS. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ISSA. Of course.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I will tell you what you did. When you called the whistleblowers in, and the whistleblowers, who are ATF agents, and you know this--

Mr. ISSA. Reclaiming my time, it's pretty clear you are disparaging me, and you are disparaging me by making a claim that's untrue.

The bottom line is, in committee, witnesses were told that they need not answer questions that were not the subject of the hearing and, in fact, those witnesses were allowed and did answer questions by the minority having to do with gun control, an issue they prefer to talk about rather than the cause of Brian Terry's death.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. McCaul).

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Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It's been a long day for America, but it's been a longer day for the Terry family. I'm going to urge everyone to vote for the ability to hire counsel, and that's what the last vote is, and I believe it will pass overwhelmingly.

But I'm going to use this time to pledge to the America people, to pledge to the Terry family, and to pledge to my colleagues: this investigation has in fact been brought to a halt in one area--and the area is the Attorney General's flat refusal to any longer cooperate with this committee.

But it doesn't change the fact that in the days and weeks to come, we will use what we can in the way of other tools, including some of the individuals that the minority has talked about today, to glean additional information, to find ways to prove accountability for the many people that had to be involved in this OCDETF operation in order for those guns to walk. We will continue to do that. We will try to find the truth.

Hopefully in the weeks to come, we also will begin getting cooperation from the administration again. But if we don't, I will tell the ranking member here today, it has always been my intention to look backwards to previous gunwalking programs that we believe were certainly poorly designed and resulted in weapons getting out of the hands of lawful people and into the hands of criminal elements. That's not going to change. It's not going to change because it's our obligation to investigate and because this one we cannot let loose until the Terry family has been kept a promise that the ranking member and I both made.

So I take the ranking member at his word today that, in fact, he will not rest until we get some answers, and I commit the same that I will not, and I urge the passage of this resolution.

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