Barack Obama
The Obama administration asserted executive privilege in June 2012 in response to a House investigation of Operation Fast and Furious, a controversial “gunwalking” operation in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed the running of guns in hopes that they could be tracked to Mexican drug cartel figures.
House Oversight Committee Chairman
Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) demanded documents relating to the Justice Department’s response to the operation, which Attorney General
Eric Holder refused to provide.
The committee voted 23-17 to hold Holder in contempt of Congress for his failure to release the documents, with the full chamber voting in favor of contempt 255-67.
The Justice Department cited executive privilege again to decline to prosecute him on the contempt charge.
Nearly four years later, District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled against Obama’s assertion of executive privilege, writing that existing disclosures relating to the operation cast doubt on the idea that the documents at issue must remain confidential.
"The Department itself has already publicly revealed the sum and substance of the very material it is now seeking to withhold,” she wrote. “Since any harm that would flow from the disclosures sought here would be merely incremental, the records must be produced."
The administration turned over the records in April 2016.
President Trump invoked executive privilege to prevent the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s full report on Wednesday.The move came just ahead of a House Judiciary Committee vote on wheth…
thehill.com