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Published January 25, 2017
This is a rush transcript from "On the Record," June 29, 2012. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: New shots fired in the Fast and Furious showdown. Less than 24 hours after the House holds Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt the Justice Department fires back. The Justice Department asserting Attorney General Eric Holder's actions do not constitute a crime and thus he will not be prosecuted.
House Oversight Chair Darrell Issa is not happy about that. His spokesperson saying it is regrettable that the political leadership of the Justice Department is trying to intervene in the effort to prevent the U.S.
attorney for the District of Columbia from making an independent decision about whether to prosecute this case.
So what can House RepublicanS do now? Congressman Jason Chaffetz joins us. Good evening, sir.
REP. JASON CHAFFETZ, R-UTAH: Hi, Greta.
VAN SUSTEREN: I have a copy of the letter from the Department of Justice to Speaker Boehner that says there will be no prosecution of the criminal contempt. I assume you have seen this, is that right?
CHAFFETZ: Yes, yes.
VAN SUSTEREN: And how do you feel about it?
CHAFFETZ: Well, it is amazing that the White House wants to have a both ways. On the one hand, they say that he is not independent enough and they will not pursue this enough, he hasn't committed a crime. He was just held in criminal contempt.
But at the same time they want the same U.S. attorney to be able to pursue the investigation of the probe of the leaks of the intelligence leaks that are happening there in the White House. So they are trying to have it both ways. That doesn't make sense.
But there is another alternative. We had a second vote yesterday and that is to go to the civil court for the House of Representatives to hire an attorney and go make the case before the court and hopefully they will find in our favor.
VAN SUSTEREN: When do you intend to go to civil court to seek essentially enforcement of this subpoena?
CHAFFETZ: It is being put together right now. We had anticipated this. It was unfortunate. We thought that the Obama White House would move quickly to seal off any opportunity for the U.S. attorney to do the right thing and actually go pursue this in the criminal court.
But at the same time, so we had foreshadowed that and that is why we had a second vote giving the House the authorization to do that. Even more Democrats piled on top of that one, and that is what we are pursuing.
VAN SUSTEREN: What is your explanation for why the subpoena is not complied with? The attorney general and the team over at DOJ says there is nothing in the documents -- which, of course, the next question if there is nothing in it why don't you turn it over except if it is part of an investigation, unless is it is part of a grudge maybe they think that Congress is being too pushy and overstepping its tort. What is your working theory as to why it has gotten to this and why the documents have not been surrendered?
CHAFFETZ: Well, it's a bit more of a theory at this point. But Greta, I do believe that what we would see within the documents is a concerted effort to obstruct Congress. Obstruction of Congress in our work is a crime. And if you had people scrambling to protect and not provide access to witnesses and not provide access to documents then you could see where this blossoms up to something much more.
Remember, Brian Terry was killed in December, mid-December of 2010. In 2011 an ICE agent was killed in Mexico, and when you see that in mid- February you see a scrambling within both homeland security and the Department of Justice where suddenly, Oh, my goodness we have a second agent that may have been killed from the weapons.
Now, they couldn't ultimately prove that he was killed from a Fast and Furious weapon, but you see a whole concerted effort to move a different direction and that is when you start to see the scrambling. Jason Weinstein goes down to phoenix and gives a glowing report of the ATF, but only later then in August to try to rescind all the glowing comments.
So you see this scramble between when we were sent the bogus letter on February 4 up until when they rescinded it in the latter part of the year.
And that is where I think the Department of Justice is like, Wow, this gets much deeper and ultimately don't want to provide the documents.
VAN SUSTEREN: I think it is painfully shameful that we have a dead border agent and a year and a half later we have not given answers to the family, and I think that the answers could have been provided long before now.
That means -- that I think is a disgrace.
I'm sort of curious whether anything is in the documents or not. Oftentimes investigations people get information from whistleblowers or sources that give you a reason to sort of pursue something.Do you have -- and I don't know that you do, but do you have any information from whistle blowers or sources that it making you pursue any particular documents and anything you are after?
CHAFFETZ: Greta, this isn't over. There will be more subpoenas issued and more witnesses called before the committee. If the Democrats think they can walk out of the vote and be done with it and say, hey, we are up for election, that isn't going to happen. I made a promise to myself and to -- there is more coming.
VAN SUSTEREN: Do you have any sources or whistleblowers that sort of piqued your interest so you are zeroing in and looking for particular documents. I don't know that you have that but do you have that?
CHAFFETZ: Absolutely. I'm not sharing them on the show don't but they are coming. I know you were doubtful and America was doubtful we would get to this point. We shouldn't be that the point. The attorney general should do the right thing and Barack Obama should do the right thing. The president should put this to rest but he hasn't. We he have a duty and obligation and moral imperative to pursue it to the end of the earth. We will do that. It is going to happen. I'm not going let go of this and certainly Chairman Issa is not going to let go of this. There is something fundamentally wrong here and we will get to the bottom of it.
VAN SUSTEREN: Congressman, thank you, sir.
CHAFFETZ: Thanks, Greta.
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/department-of-justice-refuses-to-prosecute-holder-but-fast-and-furious-investigation-far-from-over