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Newly disclosed emails offer further evidence of how strongly Attorney General Eric Holder dislikes his longtime congressional nemesis, Rep. Darrell Issa, who has led an investigation of the Justice Departments handling of a botched gun-running probe.

The Justice Department late Monday turned over more than 64,000 documents on the issue to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is led by Mr. Issa.

The committee has spent years investigating Operation Fast and Furious, a gun-tracking operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives that allowed guns to be trafficked to Mexico, apparently in the misguided belief that doing so would help them catch gun-runners for the powerful Mexican drug cartels. One of the smuggled weapons was linked to the killing of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

In an April 2011 email, Mr. Holder writes to his deputies: Issa and his idiot cronies never gave a damn about this when all that was happening was that thousands of Mexicans were being killed with guns from our country. All they want to do in reality is cripple ATF and suck up to the gun lobby. Politics at its worst maybe the media will get it.

For years, Mr. Holder has denied real-time knowledge about the bungled probe, but Republicans on Mr. Issas committee have been skeptical of those claims, leading to long-running legal fights over access to internal Justice Department documents and emails. It also led to a historic House vote finding the attorney general in contempt of Congress.

The lawmakers filed suit for access to the documents, which led to Mondays handover, and they are still fighting for others. Justice Department officials say the new documents dont contradict their past statements about how the case was handled.

Mr. Issa, a California Republican who has accused the Justice Department of continued attempts to hide key information, said the turnover is nonetheless a victory for the legislative branch, a victory for transparency, and a victory for efforts to check executive branch power.

Mr. Holder has said he didnt learn about the issue until early 2011. That February, CBS broke a story about the operation, prompting Mr. Holder to write to aides, We need answers on this. Not defensive bs real answers.

In October of that year, as the pressure intensified on Mr. Holder, senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett sent him a short note saying, Im sorry.

Mr. Holder replied, using an old mafia phrase for preparing to do battle: Time to go to the mattresses. Ready for the fight. Will send some of our stuff. All I have are the facts.

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Attorney General Holder Rips Rep. Issa, Idiot Cronies in Internal Email