‘Fast And Furious’ Settlement Entered Into DC Court

Hours after House Judiciary Committee Democrats voted to hold Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt of Congress for withholding parts of the Mueller report, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the House Oversight Committee settled the 2012 contempt case against the DOJ. The case, related to the “Fast and Furious” document subpoena demanded of Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder when Republicans held the majority, is now considered settled, since Democrats became the majority in the lower chamber and Elijah Cummings became Oversight Committee Chairman.
According to court documents, settlement negotiations first began January 2017 during the 115^th Congress. By March 7, 2018, the Justice Department and the Oversight Committee signed a conditional settlement agreement with certain conditions, which included that the court would vacate certain rulings at issue on remand. However, the court ruled last October that it would not vacate the rulings. Following a subsequent lapse in appropriations for the DOJ and the election of Cummings as Chair, “the parties resumed settlement negotiations in early February 2019. The parties informed this Court on April 4, 2019, that they had ‘made substantial progress towards a negotiated solution.’”...MORE