By Paul Scicchitano and Kathleen Walter

Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley charged in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV Wednesday that President Barack Obama’s decision to invoke executive privilege in the bungled “Operation Fast and Furious” gun-running scheme could indicate that the president is involved.

“I wonder why. Is it because the president does have something to do with it? And I don’t have any evidence of that, but it would be the first time that I had any suspicion,” asserted Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, just hours before a House committee voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over Justice Department documents related to Fast and Furious. 

“Well the only thing I can say is, it raised questions in my mind that maybe they knew more about Fast and Furious than they ever wanted us to know and that the documents that we requested might prove that,” declared Grassley. “It would be very harmful to the president, and in an election year they want to cover up until after the election.”

Grassley’s remarks appeared to represent an expansion of his earlier official statement that speculated on possible “White House involvement,” but had not specifically questioned the president’s possible involvement. 

Obama invoked executive privilege for the first time since being sworn in as president to withhold documents from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which subsequently proceeded with the contempt vote along party lines later in the day.

The president’s decision to invoke executive privilege came as a shock to Grassley and House Republicans. Presidents have invoked the privilege for years -- it's actually rooted in arguments made by George Washington himself -- but the U.S. Supreme Court first acknowledged a constitutional basis for the practice in its 1974 United States v. Nixon decision. Still, courts have never given presidents absolute authority to defy congressional subpoenas. 

Essentially, the idea behind executive privilege is that presidents should be free to engage in private decision-making with their advisers without fearing how their words or internal memos might look to Congress or the public. 

Nixon and other presidents -- including, now, Obama -- have argued that the authority also extends to the work of high-level agency officials like the attorney general, even if they weren't communicating with the president or White House about such work.

The contempt citation must still be approved by the full House, and could technically result in a federal case against Holder. Grassley does not think that such an outcome is likely, nor does he think Congress would be able to compel prosecution of Holder. 

“You can’t because that’s an executive responsibility under the court. But you would think that in so many instances where this has been done before, there has been the proper prosecution,” observed Grassley. “You’re talking about a misdemeanor — and possibly up to a year in jail time. I would think it would be very embarrassing to an attorney general to be caught in contempt when all we want is documents.”

He added that the president’s use of executive privilege appears to be at odds with his push for greater transparency. 

“You have a president that ran on a platform that he’s going to be the most transparent of any president ever, and he ends up being less transparent than most presidents,” according to Grassley. “And this is just one example of where they don’t want the transparency of these documents being out because there must be something that scares them about it and would be embarrassing to them.”

VIDEO & more on Newsmax.com: Grassley: Obama’s Actions Suggest Involvement in Fast and Furious C...