|
The operation was
a failed effort between 2009 and 2011 to stop gun smuggling
across the United States' southwestern border by the
department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
and federal prosecutors in Arizona.
As part of the operation, the department knowingly allowed
people to illegally buy guns in the United States and take them
into Mexico, court documents showed. A federal judge ordered the
department to release the documents to the U.S. House Oversight
and Government Reform Committee.
The records released on Friday were about the department's
internal deliberations on congressional and media inquiries
about the investigation, the Justice Department said.
The documents are critical to the committee's efforts to
"understand and shine light on what was happening inside DOJ
during the time of this irresponsible operation," committee
chairman and Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Republican,
said in a statement.
As of Friday afternoon, the committee staff had just begun
looking through the documents and could not release additional
details about them, a spokeswoman said.
The committee sued the department for the documents in August
2012, but the judge's order in January required the department
to release a smaller set of documents than those originally
requested by the committee.
"Notwithstanding the factual and legal errors in the district
court's January 19 order, the Department has decided not to
appeal from the court’s judgment," said Assistant Attorney
General Peter Kadzik in a Friday letter to Chaffetz.
The committee appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on
Friday for the remaining documents it had requested.
(Reporting by Julia Harte and Julia Edwards; Editing by Andrew
Hay and Grant McCool)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
|
