At Hearing, Holder Calls Issa’s Accusations ‘Shameful’

The possibility of contentious moments during the testimony of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. at a House subcommittee hearing on Wednesday already seemed high, coming just days after the administration faced anger over seizures of journalists’ records. However, the tensest exchange of the hearing seemed to catch both Mr. Holder and members of the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight panel off guard, and ended with Mr. Holder calling a congressman’s behavior “shameful.”

Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, played a telephone voice recording that he said was of Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights and President Obama’s nominee for labor secretary. Mr. Issa intimated that the recording was evidence that the nominee had covered up as a “quid pro quo” and demanded the contents of e-mails from Mr. Perez.

“I’m sure there was a good reason why the content of the e-mails was not released,” Mr. Holder said.

Mr. Issa scoffed and said the content was not released because Mr. Holder did not want it public.

At that, Mr. Holder snapped back at what he said was an unwarranted and public ascribing of motives that was “too consistent with the way you conduct yourself as a member of Congress. It is unacceptable and it is shameful.”

Mr. Issa, as the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, had subpoenaed records about Mr. Perez’s role in a deal with the city of St. Paul to drop a housing discrimination lawsuit in exchange for the Justice Department’s declining to join two whistle-blower complaints against the city.