Steven Holt: “The resolution before us today is an illegitimate, politically motivated smear campaign. Never in the history of the…”

“The resolution before us today is an illegitimate, politically motivated smear campaign. Never in the history of the House has a U.S. Attorney General been held in contempt. What makes this resolution particularly outrageous is that there is absolutely no basis for it. The Attorney General has testified repeatedly about Operation Fast & Furious. The Justice Department has turned over thousands of pages of relevant records about this incident. None of that matters to the majority. Neither does the fact that these kinds of operations were undertaken by the Bush administration. And the majority does not want the public to know that not a single witness was allowed to testify before the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee about past ``gun walking'' episodes in the Bush administration. That's why this resolution and the Oversight Committee's ``hearings'' into Fast & Furious are not about ``gun walking''--they are about election year politics. Rather than dealing with the substantive issue of illegal guns and how to reduce violent gun-related crime, today we have a political stunt that does nothing to solve the problem that cost the life of a federal agent. Mr. Speaker, the public see this for what it is: a politically motivated legislative lynching--and those who support this illegitimate resolution will have to answer for it to the voters.”