Newt: As speaker, I would defund Justice Dept. until Holder ousted

TheDC asked Gingrich if he would send Capitol Hill police to arrest Holder, as the Washington Times had suggested the House could, now that he is in both criminal and civil contempt of Congress.

“No,” Gingrich said in response, during a wide-ranging interview with TheDC staff in the news outlet’s Washington, D.C., offices. “If I were speaker, I’d cut off funding because that’s real. If I were speaker, I’d announce that we’re not moving any appropriations for the Justice Department as long as Holder is attorney general.”

“The reason [former President Bill] Clinton and I got a lot done is we both understood what was real,” Gingrich added. “Yeah, we held press conferences and we postured, but we had real brawls. We closed the government. We had real fights and people got it. The reason we were re-elected in ’96 is we had the guts to close the government.”