In 2012 Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress by a Republican House of Representatives. Now, in 2019, a Democrat House is set to hold Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt of Congress. As these happened in fairly close proximity to each other, I think it is good to compare and contrast the two situations.

On December 10, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Brain Terry was killed in a gun battle with a Mexican drug cartel. It was determined that he had been killed by a person using an AK-47 that had been illegally smuggled out of the US in federal law enforcement operation called “Fast and Furious” (F&F). During F&F about 2,000 firearms were allowed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) to be smuggled across the Mexican border. When it was found that ATF had known that the firearm used to kill agent Terry was taken to Mexico illegally, but had lost track of it after it was in Mexico, congressional investigations (and Inspector General) were launched. During the investigation the Department of Justice, (which was ran by AG Holder), sent a letter to Senator Grassley stating that had done everything in its power to stop guns for going to Mexico. The problem was, this was not true. In fact, the DOJ ended up recalling the letter 10 months after it was sent because it was so problematic. As Congress came to realize that the letter was not true, and about 2 months before the letter was recalled, the House Government and Oversight committee subpoenaed information concerning the letter. AG Holder refused to turn over these documents, as well as some others, and was held in contempt of Congress. When the vote was held it was passed by a bipartisan majority. Democrats in large part were angry with the vote, but 17 voted to hold the AG in contempt.

In the current scenario Democrats are pushing to hold AG Barr in contempt for not turning over the full, unredacted, report of the Mueller investigation. This report found that there was no collusion with the Russians by the Trump campaign and, by my reading, no enough evidence to support a charge of obstruction of justice. The AG is prevented by law passed by Congress after President Clinton was impeached. This law prevents the AG from turning over the information that touches on active investigations, could jeopardize investigative methods and techniques, or could be unduly prejudicial to people not charged. So, while the AG is following the law Representative Nadler plans to hold a vote to hold AG Barr in contempt for following that law.

As can be seen the two scenarios are totally different. In AG Holder’s case he withheld information and documents that were definitely within the purview of Congress’s role to provide oversight of government actions. This is especially true considering that the DOJ under AG Holder’s leadership sent a factually incorrect letter to a senator that was only retracted when it became clear that it had been found out. In AG Barr’s case he has provided all the information that he is allowed to by a law that was designed to prevent the release of information that had no purpose but to be politically damaging as had been done to President Clinton.

I recommend that we contact our Representatives and ask them to not take the politically motivated and unjust action of holding AG Barr in contempt.