In a June 19 letter, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. asked President Obama to deny documents to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding the Fast and Furious gun-running program. A day later, Obama invoked executive privilege. On that same day, the committee voted Holder in contempt, and the full House held him in contempt on June 28.
The June 19 letter relies heavily on a Justice Department legal opinion issued in 1981, involving a strikingly similar dispute. After a House oversight subcommittee subpoenaed the administration for documents, Attorney General William French Smith provided legal and constitutional reasons why President Reagan should invoke executive privilege. He did so. Like Obama, it was Reagan’s first claim of executive privilege. The subcommittee proceeded to hold Secretary of the Interior James Watt in contempt.
