Matthew Boyle at the Daily Caller reports what could be a significant development in the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious, the Obama Administration’s deadly “gun walking” program. A House Democrat has broken ranks with his party - which is absurdly trying to claim that Attorney General Eric Holder has complied with House Oversight subpoenas, even though not a single category of requested documents has been fully provided, and Holder has failed to produce anything to satisfy 13 of the 22 categories.
The ranking Democrat on House Oversight, Elijah Cummings (D-MD), comically insists that Holder is “still producing documents,” a process that apparently involves chiseling subpoena responses upon blocks of granite, and will be completed at some indeterminate point after the next election. It’s noteworthy that Holder’s defenders can never specify exactly which documents are still squeezing their way between the cracks of the Justice Department stone wall, or explain why it’s taking them so long to materialize.
On the eve of Holder’s citation for contempt of Congress, one Democrat appears to have had enough:
Indiana Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly told The Daily Caller on Tuesday that he supports the House oversight committee’s efforts to enforce the congressional subpoena of Attorney General Eric Holder over Operation Fast and Furious.
“One of the duties of Congress is to provide oversight of the Executive Branch,” Donnelly told TheDC. “There has been a serious allegation of federal law enforcement misconduct and we need to get to the bottom of this issue without playing partisan politics.”
It’s not clear from this statement whether Donnelly would support contempt charges against Holder, but he’s making a pretty major break from the Party line, which holds that the entire Fast and Furious investigation is a partisan witch hunt. The other members of the distressingly small group of House Democrats who took Fast and Furious seriously are more likely to answer questions about it with a terse “no comment” these days.
As it happens, Donnelly is the sole Democrat candidate in the Indiana Senate race, whose Republican contender will be either incumbent Richard Lugar or Richard Mourdock, depending on how Tuesday night’s primary goes. Sometimes elections get results, even before they happen.
