BlogWonks

Barack Obama promised us “change we can believe in”. So, who’s he hired for his administration so far? Nothing but former Bill Clinton staffers like John Podesta, Rahm Emanuel, and now Eric Holder, who has just been asked to be Obama’s Attorney General. Change, where’s the change?

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has conditionally offered Eric Holder the job as attorney general, and the former top Clinton administration official has accepted, a senior Democrat said on Tuesday.

Before the offer becomes official, Obama’s team wants to determine if Holder could win Senate confirmation with broad bipartisan support and clean up a Justice Department wracked by scandals during George W. Bush’s presidency, the Democrat said.

“We know we have the votes for Senate confirmation, but we want to make sure he would have broad support so he can make needed reforms,” said the Democrat, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

Since Obama’s election two weeks ago, the 57-year-old Holder, the deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton, has emerged as the top candidate for the job as the nation’s top law enforcement and legal officer who deals with issues like terrorism and crime.

Eric Holder comes with some very serious baggage. Holder approved Bill Clinton’s pardon of that total dirtball and fugitive from justice Marc Rich. Holder also facilitated the forced deportation of Elian Gonzalez without having a court order allowing him to do so.  Holder was also involved with efforts by the Clinton Justice Department to force banks into making mortgage loans to minorities who couldn’t really afford the loans in the first place (sound familiar?) Eric Holder has shown exceptionally poor judgment in these matters, and I find it troubling that this is the guy that Obama wants running the Department of Justice.

NRO has much more on Holder, particularly on the story behind Holder’s support for Marc Rich’s pardon. Eric Holder did not just approve of Bill Clinton’s pardon, as many people believe. Holder actually helped lobby Bill Clinton on behalf of the Rich family to get this outrageous pardon facilitated.

Much has been made, and appropriately so, of Holder’s untoward performance in the final corrupt act of the Clinton administration: the pardons issued in the departing president’s final hours. Of these, most notorious is the case of Marc Rich, an unrepentant fugitive wanted on extensive fraud, racketeering, and trading-with-the-enemy charges — but granted a pardon nonetheless thanks to the intercession of his ex-wife, a generous donor to Clinton’s library and legal-defense fund.

Holder’s role was aptly described as “unconscionable” by a congressional committee. He steered Rich’s allies to retain the influential former White House counsel Jack Quinn (Holder later conceded he hoped Quinn would help him become attorney general in a Gore administration); he helped Quinn directly lobby Clinton, doing an end-run around the standard pardon process (including DOJ’s pardon attorney); and he kept the deliberations hidden from the district U.S. attorney and investigative agencies prosecuting Rich so they couldn’t learn about the pardon application and register their objections.

Eric Holder also helped to get Bill Clinton’s pardon of 16 FALN terrorists accomplished as a way of pandering to the Puerto Rican community in New York City so that Hillary would have a better chance of winning New York’s senate seat.

There’s more. In 1999, over the objections of the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and prosecuting attorneys, Holder supported Clinton’s commutation of the sentences of 16 FALN conspirators. These pardons — of terrorists who even Holder has conceded had not expressed any remorse — were issued in the months after al-Qaeda’s 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, when the Clinton administration was pretending to be the scourge of terrorism. The commutations were nakedly political, obviously designed by Clinton to assist his wife’s impending Senate campaign by appealing to New York’s substantial Puerto Rican vote.

Eric Holder is an exceptionally poor choice to serve as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. It may be time for the Senate GOP to try out their filibuster over this nomination.

Related posts:

1. The Gray Lady spinning for Holder? On one hand, at least the New York Times does...
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3. Was Eric Holder clueless, or lying about Elian Gonzalez? I’ve already pointed out why I think Eric Holder is...
4. Holder’s role in Rich pardon making Dems nervous I would hope it would make the Democrats feel far...
5. Another Obama advisor under fire This time it’s Eric Holder, who as deputy Attorney General...

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