The White House is defending its refusal to release documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious to the House of Representatives by saying that Gov. Mitt Romney is worse.
The defense came after Romney’s team said the White House document-block clashes with President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign promise of transparency and openness.
“Obama’s pledge to run the most open and transparent administration in history has turned out to be just another broken promise,” Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in an June 20 email to The Daily Caller.
In response, Lis Smith, an Obama campaign spokeswoman, announced that “we look forward to a debate with Mitt Romney about transparency and how he erased his hard drives as governor of Massachusetts and refuses to release his tax returns, reveal his campaign bundlers, say how he’d pay for his tax plan, or make public his fundraisers.”
Smith’s email did not mention Fast and Furious, under which Department of Justice officials allowed the smuggling of roughly 2,000 military-style weapons to Mexican drug gangs. The weapons were subsequently used in many crimes, and were linked to the deaths of at least 300 Mexicans and a U.S. border agent.