Rep. Joe Walsh: Holder shows “lack of accountability” over fast and furious

>>> a botched government gun running operation in new mexico is taken behind closed doors today in the hopes both sides will meet in the middle . attorney general eric holder and congressman darrell issa agreed to an afternoon meeting to decide what role was played in the botched monitor iing plan. the contempt charges against holder are troubling but progress is being made towards a resolution.

>> pretty good last friday. he made a decision to take off the table certain documents which would have been illegal for the attorney general to produce. applications, the information about confidential informants, and those kind of documents. he's taken that off the table.

>> republican congressman walsh, part of the oversight reform committee and joins me now. nice to see you today. talk about the potential for a compromise, if the justice department can turn over partial documents as opposed to all of the documents, is that enough for you? and if not, what is?

>> boy, i hope so. look, i think chairman issa has displayed great patience throughout this. we've had a subpoena out there since last october, requesting from 80,000 to 90,000 documents. to date, the attorney general has given us about 5,000 to 6,000, most of which are redacted. i think chairman issa has bent over to try to accommodate the attorney general, because, look, holding him in contempt of congress is a real serious move. nobody wants to go there, but this is a serious issue, and for some reason, they haven't been cooperating. and i hope -- i hope -- that he understands the, attorney general understands and will make every effort to cooperate.

>> demonstrated patience, since october you have been blatantly calling for the resignation of eric holder . what bothers you the most about "fast and fuse" and the government's role in it?

>> what bothers me so much, and you're right. this is an investigation that demands to be had. we do need to know who knew what, when, because we have a family out there, ryan terry's family. this was such a botched and flawed program, we now pretty much conclusively know that doj was well wavy of the progr -- aware that they were aware of this and concern on eric holder 's part, i found that so troubling.

>> i ask you this today on " morning joe ," we just heard from congressman elijah cummings , he also said the program went unchecked before holder ever stepped into his post. take a listen.

>> this whole operation, these types of operations, actually started under the bush administration , and the bush administration did not about it. although they knew about it. when eric holder found out about these tack tactics he immediately stopped it, said, no, we're not going to have this and immediately demand and investigation by his i.g.

>> how do you respond to what congressman cummings is saying.

>> to my colleague, it's just not accurate. we wouldn't be at this point if attorney general holder was cooperating, and, look, this is a democrat line they've thrown out there that this was somehow started during the bush administration . "operation fast and furious " is dramatically different than the operation that went on in the bush administration . the bush administration commented with the mexican government . they let the mexican government know what they were doing. they traced the guns. " fast and furious ," our government under this administration, purposely turned the other way and stopped tracing thousands of firearms. so this is a much bigger, a much more serious breach of justice.

>> we'll wait to see what happens with that face-to-face with eric holder and republican congressman joe walsh . thank you.