Fast and Furious: House plans vote on holding Eric Holder in contempt The House plans to vote Thursday on whether Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. should become the first sitting attorney general to be held in contempt of Congress for withholding documents requested as part of a congressional investigation into Operation "Fast and Furious." The vote is set to cap a months-long feud between the Obama administration and Republican lawmakers over an ongoing probe into a botched gun-running operation led by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from 2009 to 2011. Eric Holder mingled with members of Congress, warmly greeted by Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), at a picnic at the White House on Wednesday, the night before the full House is scheduled to vote to cite the Attorney General in contempt. Robert Barnes, N.C. Aizenman and William Branigin Individual mandate, Medicaid expansion are legal, but federal government can't withhold existing Medicaid funds. Democrats charge that the vote is part of a scripted election-year political act, backed by the National Rifle Association, to embarrass Holder and the White House. Republicans adamantly dismiss those claims, saying they are concerned with an attorney general whose Justice Department, in refusing to release documents, is covering up what senior officials knew - and when they knew - about the operation that allowed thousands of firearms onto U.S. streets and into Mexico and resulted in the death of a U.S. border patrol agent. If the vote succeeds, the House would refer the matter to Ronald C. Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who would have to decide whether to press criminal charges against Holder, his boss. At least one Republican lawmaker also plans to sue the Justice Department to release the information requested by Congress. Ahead of the vote, the leader of the Congressional Black Caucus said that several of the group's members plan to walk off the House floor in protest when debate over the contempt motion begins Thursday afternoon. The planned walkout "will show that some of us just don't wanna observe an injustice taking place," Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.) told CNN on Thursday morning. Holder has testified to congressional committees about Fast and Furious nine times over the past 14 months. The attorney general is scheduled to be away from Washington on Thursday, in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., to speak at the annual convention of the League of United Latin American Citizens. He attended the White House Congressional Picnic on Wednesday evening to mingle with some of the lawmakers who plan to hold him in contempt. Adding to the political intrigue, the contempt vote is scheduled for the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the individual health insurance mandate at the heart of President Obama's landmark health-care law. The conflict between the Justice Department and House Republicans centers on a particular set of documents that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subpoenaed from the Justice Department in October as part of its investigation into Fast and Furious. The operation, named after the popular movie series, was run out of the ATF's Phoenix division, with the legal backing of the U.S. attorney in Phoenix. As part of the operation, ATF agents purposefully did not interdict more than 2,000 weapons they suspected of being purchased at Arizona gun shops by illegal buyers known as "straw purchasers"; agents hoped to later track them to a Mexican drug cartel.