On this weekend’s broadcast of “This Week” on ABC, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa defended his decision to forgo a compromise with Attorney General Eric Holder in his investigation over the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal.
According to the California Republican, the Department of Justice offered only page after page of blacked-out redacted documents.
“It’s regrettable that we’re here,” Issa said. “This is not a place I want to be. This is not a place that Brian Terry’s mother Josi or anyone else wants to be. This started off about getting answers on behalf of Sen. [Chuck] Grassley on how did Brian Terry come to getting killed with weapons that we knew about and helped transport … to the bad guys. But we got here mostly because after denials we started getting these things. These are examples of the kind of discovery that we got for quite a while. So those 7,600 pages they talk about — you can’t rely on them answering questions.”
But, as for the meeting with Holder himself, Issa said he came with very little to offer and some stiff conditions to get “briefed” on what he was seeking from the Justice Department.
“One of the problems is, last Tuesday, 11th hour, after an exchange of e-mails, they said,’Let’s have the meeting.’ I had the meeting. They came with nothing. Not even an offer in the form of a piece of paper. What they said orally was, ‘We will brief you. We will then you give the information that we believe supports that briefing. But you have to first agree to dismiss your subpoenas and your contempt.’ We can’t do that. You can’t play liar’s poker when you’re looking into this kind of crime and when you’re looking into the cover-up. Remember, it was deny, delay and recuse. That’s what we have been dealing with since of February 4 of last year.”