For the first time since he took office, President Obama has asserted Executive Privilege. He had gone longer than any other president in the last three decades to do so.

Obama used Executive Privilege over documents that were being sought by a House panel before its vote to hold Eric Holder, the Attorney General, in Contempt of Congress.

A letter was sent to the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Representative Darrell Issa (Rep-Calif) as the committee was about to begin contempt proceedings.

The letter asserting Executive Privilege, from Deputy Attorney General James Cole, pointed out that the Department of Justice has accomodated the committee’s legitimate oversight interests. “The information provided to the Committee shows clearly that the Department leadership did not intend to mislead Congress in the February 4 letter or in any other statements concerning Fast and Furious,” the letter read in part. “The Department has already shared with the Committee all internal documents concerning the drafting of the February 4 letter, and numerous Department officials and employees, including the Attorney General, have provided testimony, transcribed interviews, briefings, and other statements concerning the drafting and subsequent withdrawal of that letter.”

The Attorney General, Eric Holder wrote a letter to President Obama requesting the privileges. In that letter Holder wrote, “We consider the Department’s accommodations … to have been extraordinary. Despite these accommodations, however, the Committee scheduled a vote on its contempt resolution. At that point, the Department offered an additional accommodation that would fully address the Committee’s remaining questions …The Committee, however, has not accepted the Department’s offer and has instead elected to proceed with its contempt vote.”

Issa has been scolded by both the White House and Democrats for his contempt vote. The White House said, “Republicans insist on moving forward with an effort that Republicans and objective legal experts have noted is purely political.” They point to more pressing issues such as the doubling of Student Loans interest rates due to take place at the end of the month as well as the expiring federal transportation funding that takes place at the same time.

Speaker of the House, John Boehner (R-Ohio) denounced the president’s action, his office said “Until now, everyone believed that the decisions regarding Fast and Furious were confined to the Department of Justice. The White House decision to invoke executive privilege implies that White House officials were either involved in the Fast and Furious operation or the cover-up that followed,” said Michael Steel, the spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio.”The administration has always insisted that wasn’t the case. Were they lying, or are they now bending the law to hide the truth?”

The contempt charges stem from the “Gun-walking operation dubbed “Fast and Furious,” the latest in a series of sting operations that go as far back as 2006 with “Project Gunrunner.” The first of these gun-walking operations was “Operation Wide Receiver,” that took place in early 2006 and ran until 2007, no arrests in that operation were made until 2009.

In October of 2009, a teleconference was held at the Department of Justice in Washington D.C. In attendance were Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, ATF Director Kenneth E. Melson, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Michele Leonhart, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Robert Mueller and the top federal prosecutors in the Southwestern border states. It was then that they decided on a strategy to eliminate arms trafficking networks. None at the meeting suggested using the “Gun-walking” tactic, but ATF supervisors soon took up the tactic to achieve those goals.

The Justice Department has already turned over 7,600 documents to Congress in response to their investigation, many of those documents go back as far as 2006 when the “Gun-walking” project was first initiated.