By FREDERIC J. FROMMER
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- Lawyers for the House and the Justice Department will meet to
try to resolve a lawsuit over congressional efforts to get records
related to Operation Fast and Furious, a bungled gun-tracking operation
in Arizona.
The lawyers told U.S. District
Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Tuesday that the two sides would prefer to
meet without the assistance of the court. Kerry W. Kircher, a lawyer for
the GOP-led House, said the discussions would take place in the "near
future." Jackson, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, scheduled
another status conference in the case for Jan. 10.
In
broaching the topic of a settlement, Jackson told the two sides that
there is "not a lot of controlling legal precedent here."
Obama
has invoked executive privilege and Attorney General Eric Holder has
been found in contempt of the House for refusing to turn over records
that might explain what led the Justice Department to reverse course,
after initially denying to Congress that federal agents had used a
controversial tactic called gun-walking in the failed law enforcement
operation.
In a Feb. 4, 2011, letter to
Congress, the Justice Department said agents made every effort to
interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their
transportation to Mexico. That assertion that turned out to be
incorrect, and the department withdrew the letter 10 months later.
In
a question-and-answer session after a news conference on another topic
in New Haven, Conn., on Tuesday, Holder said the department has long
sought to resolve the issue with the House.
"We
are prepared as we indicated many months ago to try to strike a deal,
to come up with a way in which we can satisfy the legitimate oversight
request that Congress has made, understanding that there is a need for
privilege, the ability for us in the executive branch to speak candidly
with one another," he said.
"I think there is a deal that can be struck," Holder added. "We could have struck this deal many months ago."
The
department has already turned over 7,600 pages of documents on the
operation itself. The continuing dispute is over documents describing
how the department responded to the congressional investigation of the
operation. Obama asserted executive privilege to shield the
administration's internal decision-making about the congressional
investigation.
In Fast and Furious, agents
from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives abandoned
the agency's usual practice of intercepting all weapons they believed to
be illicitly purchased. The goal of the gun-walking approach was to
track such weapons to high-level arms traffickers who long had eluded
prosecution, and to dismantle their networks.
But
agents lost track of many of the weapons, and hundreds of them
purchased from Arizona gun shops wound up in Mexico, where many of them
were recovered at crime scenes. Two guns in Operation Fast and Furious
were found on the U.S. side of the border at the scene of a shooting in
which U.S. border agent Brian Terry was killed. Five men have since been
charged in Terry's death, and one pleaded guilty last month and faces
life in prison. Three others remain fugitives.
Also
Tuesday, Ian Heath Gershengorn, a deputy assistant attorney general in
the Justice Department's civil division, told the judge that the
subpoena from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee for
the records will expire on Jan. 3, when the current Congress expires and
a new one takes its place. He said that could make the case moot.
Jackson
asked both sides to file a joint report in January on the status of the
subpoena. Because the House will remain in GOP hands, it's likely that a
new subpoena would be issued, barring a settlement in the case.
The
Justice Department has urged Jackson to dismiss the lawsuit. In court
papers, the department argued that the Constitution does not permit the
courts to resolve the political dispute between the executive branch and
the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Lawyers
for the House responded in their own filing that "labeling a dispute
`political' is not a legal argument; it is a talking point masquerading -
poorly - as an argument."
Meanwhile, two men
were sentenced to multi-year prison terms on Monday for their roles in a
gun smuggling ring that was tracked by Operation Fast and Furious. The
Justice Department said the men were among so-called straw buyers who
illegally purchased weapons for traffickers and Mexican drug cartels in a
Phoenix-based gun trafficking ring.
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Associated Press writer Michael Melia in New Haven, Conn., contributed to this story
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