US House holds Holder in contempt The Republican-led House of Representatives has held Eric Holder, the US attorney-general, in contempt of Congress over the botched "Fast and Furious" gun-smuggling operation, marking the first time a sitting cabinet member has been censured in this way. Some Democrats walked out en masse to protest the holding of the unprecedented vote, but with 17 members of the president's party siding with Republicans on the issue, the resolution easily passed 255-67. The House later voted 258-95 to pass a resolution for civil contempt of Congress against Mr Holder. The contempt vote would usually require further investigation by the Department of Justice - Mr Holder's own agency - but legal analysts said it was not clear how the administration would deal with this move given the difficulties of a US attorney investigating his own boss. John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House, urged his colleagues to support the resolution. "I don't take this matter lightly," Mr Boehner said before the vote. But no justice department is above the law and no justice department is above the Constitution, which each of us has sworn an oath to uphold. So I ask the members of this body to come together and to support this resolution. Mr Holder said that the contempt vote "may make for good political theatre in the minds of some, but it is, at base, both a crass effort and a grave disservice to the American people." "Whatever the path that this matter will now follow, it will not distract me or the men and women of the Department of Justice from the important tasks that are our responsibility," Mr Holder said in a statement. A great deal of work for the American people remains to be done. I'm getting back to it. I suggest that those who orchestrated today's vote do the same. Republicans began contempt proceedings against Mr Holder over his refusal to release all documents relating to the Fast and Furious operation, under which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tried to monitor weapons bought by Mexican drug cartels. However, it lost track of more than 2,000 guns it had allowed fake buyers to take over the border, and two of the missing firearms were found at the scene where Brian Terry, a US Border Patrol agent, was killed in 2010. Republicans are particularly interested in finding out why the justice department decided to withdraw a letter it sent to Congress on February 4 denying allegations of gun-smuggling. But with the contempt vote looming, Mr Holder last week said the justice department had been extremely co-operative with the investigation, providing nearly 8,000 documents and holding numerous meetings with committee staff. The White House asserted executive privilege over the documents, the first time that President Barack Obama had used this power since taking office in 2009. Richard Nugent, a Republican lawmaker, said on Thursday that the Obama administration had done little but "hide, deny and stonewall" in the House's investigation into the operation, comparing it to former president Richard Nixon's actions during the 1970s Watergate scandal. But Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader in the House, said the Republican moves against Mr Holder were an "abuse of power" and she urged her fellow Democrats to stay and vote against it. "What the Republicans are doing with the motion today is contemptible," she said. It was a "witch hunt" based on "a false premise" that the justice department had orchestrated a cover-up. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus had planned to walk off the House floor to protest the vote against Mr Holder, the first African-American attorney-general. However, many Democrats representing conservative-leaning districts had come under pressure from the National Rifle Association, the pro-gun lobby group, to join the vote against Mr Holder. The NRA compiles a scorecard on how lawmakers vote on Second Amendment gun rights and warned legislators that their vote on Mr Holder would be a factor in calculating their scores.