Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), who clashed with Attorney General Eric Holder during a hearing this week, disputed accusations that the GOP’s investigations of the Obama administration were racially motivated.
“There are some of us that could care less about someone’s party or someone’s race or someone’s gender, someone’s age. We don’t care. We care about whether you are helping or hurting our country if you are in a position to do one or the other,” Gohmert said in a House floor speech Thursday.
{mosads}Holder suggested in remarks before Rev. Al Sharpton’s annual National Action Network convention on Wednesday that Republicans have behaved differently toward him and President Obama compared to their predecessors.
“You look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee. Forget about me. What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What president has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?” Holder said.
Gohmert said the House GOP’s investigations, such as the Fast and Furious arms trafficking investigation that led to a 2012 vote holding the attorney general in contempt of Congress, were simply standard oversight.
“If somebody wants to try to make something out of that, that’s their problem,” Gohmert said.
In a testy exchange during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Gohmert pressed Holder again for documents related to the Fast and Furious investigation.
“You don’t want to go there, buddy, all right? You don’t want to go there,” Holder said.
“Sir, we’ve been trying to get to the bottom of Fast and Furious where at least a couple hundred Mexicans died,” Gohmert retorted. “So I don’t need any lectures from you about contempt.”
Eric Garland contributed to this report.