Eric Holder responds to Fast and Furious critics, 'Some people can kiss my a*s'

© Reuters

Potty-mouthed U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in October.

Newly revealed emails show Attorney General Eric Holder trying and failing to contain his temper over the botched Fast and Furious probe, at one point saying "some people can kiss my a - '' if they think he was too hard on a U.S. Attorney pushed out over the scandal.

The emails were among 64,000 documents turned over by the Justice Department this week to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has spent years investigating Fast and Furious, a gun-tracking operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. The botched operation allowed guns to be taken to Mexico, apparently in the misguided belief that doing so would help them catch gun-runners for the drug cartels.

By August 2011, the bungled operation had become a full-fledged scandal, forcing the reassignment of the head of ATF and the resignation of the U.S. Attorney in Arizona.

In an Aug. 30 email, a deputy wrote to Mr. Holder and others that about 25 other U.S. Attorneys around the country "are upset'' about how the U.S. Attorney's resignation was handled.

Mr. Holder then vented in a reply: "Why wouldn't we get the benefit of the doubt. Assume we're doing things for the right reasons and in the right way.''

He then added "I'm counting to 10,'' indicating that he was trying not to get too upset about the matter.

"Some people can kiss my a - ,'' the attorney general replied later that night.

The emails turned over this week were provided after a long, bitter fight between the Justice Department and the oversight committee led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.). The fight over access to documents eventually led to a lawsuit and a House vote to find Mr. Holder in contempt of Congress, the first time such an action was taken against a sitting attorney general. The committee is still seeking other documents Mr. Issa says the Obama administration is wrongly withholding.

While committee staff are still sifting through the emails, what's become known to date shows the degree to which Mr. Holder was angry that Republican lawmakers did not believe his statements that he wasn't aware of the botched gun-walking probe until well after it had happened, and that some within his own department suggested he was being too hard on people involved.

Around the same time, Mr. Holder and other at the Justice Department were getting increasingly upset with then-ATF head Kenneth Melson. As a result of the Fast and Furious problems, Mr. Melson was reassigned to another part of the Justice Department, but department superiors were upset that he'd cleaned out his office days early, and wanted to issue his own press release on his departure, rather than leaving it to the Justice Department.

"This is not a negotiation,'' Mr. Holder wrote to aides, saying, in effect, Mr. Melson should do as he's told since he wasn't losing his job. "Soft landing is way more than enough,'' the attorney general wrote. On hearing that Melson's office was now empty and that would likely start tongues wagging at the agency, Mr. Holder said someone should go shut his office door.

Mr. Melson didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Another email from earlier in 2011 shows that as the issue began gaining steam, a senior ATF official sent an email to two Justice Department officials wrongly insisting that the agency "did not allow guns to 'walk'.''

That message was forwarded to Mr. Holder, who replied, "do they really, really know?"