US lawmakers on Thursday took the historic, controversial step of holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt, sharpening the election-year discord between the Obama administration and its Republican foes in Congress.
Some 100 furious Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi, the party’s top member in the House of Representatives, stormed out of the chamber at the start of the vote, called because Holder has withheld documents related to a botched gun-tracking operation.
They were protesting what they described as highly partisan action to railroad the contempt vote through the House — discrediting both Holder and President Barack Obama ahead of the November elections.
The resolution was adopted 255-67 in the Republican-led House. Several dozen Democrats refused to participate, while 17 in Obama’s party voted to find the nation’s top justice official in criminal contempt.
The move paves the way for legal action over a probe into the gun-tracking Operation Fast and Furious, and Holder’s failure to turn over internal Justice Department documents and emails sought through subpoena by a congressional panel conducting the investigation.
The House also passed a civil contempt resolution, which would authorize the panel to sue the Justice Department in federal court over the documents.
The contempt finding, the first for a sitting member of a president’s cabinet, was immediately branded by the White House as a “transparently political stunt.”
