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The Holder Years and The Perils Of Politics Over Principle In Government

holderericBelow is my column on the resignation of Eric Holder as United States Attorney General. For civil libertarians, Holder’s tenure as Attorney General under President Obama has been one of the most damaging periods in our history with a comprehensive attack on various constitutional rights and principles from free speech to the free press to international law. In recent polling by NBC and the Wall Street Journal, Holder was the second most unpopular government official after the positively radioactive Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

As someone who previously called for Holder’s firing after the investigation of various journalists under national security powers, I am hardly one who can offer congratulatory sentiments for such a record. However, much like President Obama, one has to wonder what could have been if Holder had chosen a more principled and less political approach to his office. Holder is resigning the same week that a federal judge ordered the release of “Fast and Furious” documents after the Justice Department was accused of a pattern of delay and obstruction. Holder was previously held in contempt by Congress for his withholding documents and conflicting accounts to an oversight committee looking into the scandal. Indeed, Holder was looking at an even more aggressive period with the possible loss of the Senate and increased GOP seats in the House.

Ironically, Holder came into office trying to distinguish himself from such disastrous predecessors as Alberto Gonzales but proved no less political or blindly loyal to his own president. Indeed, both men fought aggressively to expand the powers of the presidency and national security laws over countervailing individual rights and separation of powers principles. It will be civil liberties and not civil rights that will be the lasting, and troubling, legacy of Eric Holder. The column is below:

The resignation of Eric Holder as attorney general is an unavoidably symbolic moment for an administration that itself appears to be waning in the final years of a troubled second term. Holder truly personifies an administration of unrivaled ambitions colliding with inescapable realities.

He proved a fierce friend to President Obama, and that loyalty might have worked to the disadvantage of both men. After a series of major court defeats and public controversies, Obama (like President Bush before him) might have been served better by an attorney general who was more detached from him and more attached to the constitutional principles that shape both their offices.

Holder has secured a well-earned position for himself in history as the nation’s first black U.S. attorney general. He is by any means an American success story. The son of a father born in Barbados and raised in New York, Holder used his considerable intellect to go to Columbia University for both college and law school. He was made a judge on the local D.C. court by President Reagan and was appointed U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia by President Clinton, who later made him deputy attorney general.

Holder’s life should be both an inspiration and a cautionary tale for young lawyers. As he ascended into power, Holder became increasingly viewed by critics as a bit too ambitious and political within the Justice Department. That reputation was reaffirmed for many with Clinton’s last-minute pardon of fugitive and major Democratic donor Marc Rich. By any objective measure, Rich was one of the least deserving pardon applicants in history — with 65 criminal counts, from tax evasion to wire fraud to racketeering to illegal trades with Iran. While his companies later pleaded guilty to 35 criminal counts, Rich fled to live the good life in Switzerland. Besides a long list of alleged felonies, Rich had a long list of friends close to Clinton … and Clinton in turn had Eric Holder.

Holder was accused of short-cutting the normal procedures to push through the pardon for Rich. Though he said he was “neutral” on the pardon (which itself is a bit shocking), former FBI director Louis Freeh said the Clinton White House had “used” Holder to keep the FBI and the DOJ from being heard on the pardon.

In his confirmation hearing, Holder promised not to have a repeatof the Rich scandal and not to allow politics to influence his decisions. It was a defining moment and one that Holder would have been wise to work to live up to.

But it did not take long for Holder’s inspiring “Mr. Smith comes to Washington” story to become “all the king’s men.” When the president was confronted with demands to investigate and prosecute individuals for torture under the Bush administration, Holder faced an early test of principle. He failed. The Justice Department blocked any prosecution despite our obligation under international treaties and the president’s (and Holder’s) acknowledgment that waterboarding is clearly a form of torture.

To quote Jerry Maguire, Obama had Holder at “hello” in seeking unbridled presidential authority. Many of the cases that Holder brought and policies that he supported resulted in startling defeats. He lost a series of criminal cases seeking massive reductions in privacy and due process protections for citizens. He unwisely pursued cases such as Canning, where a unanimous Supreme Court curtailed the powers of the president to make recess appointments.

Holder personally announced Obama’s “kill list” policy, in which the president claimed the right to kill any U.S. citizen on his sole authority without a charge, let alone a conviction. Holder’s department used the controversial Espionage Act of 1917 to bring twice the number of such prosecutions of all prior presidents under the Act. Journalists were placed under surveillance in a record that rivaled that of President Nixon. Holder led an appalling crackdown on whistle-blowers. Holder fought to justify massive warrantless surveillance and unchecked presidential authority to attack other countries without congressional approval.

Holder’s continual confrontations with Congress came to a head in a series of scandals, including the “Fast and Furious” controversy in which the government allowed drug gangs to get high-powered weapons in a truly moronic “gun walking” program. In that and other scandals, the administration withheld documents and key witnesses from oversight committees. Holder was wrong and was ultimately held in contempt of Congress.

While Holder can be credited with not shying away from our race conflicts, his actions such as intervening in the Zimmerman case (after the shooting of Trayvon Martin) and the recent Ferguson shooting were viewed by many as premature. His calling the United States a “nation of cowards” on race was a brave but also a divisive moment. In the end, however, his positive work in the area of civil rights will ultimately be eclipsed by his destructive legacy in the area of civil liberties and constitutional government.

The sad truth is that Holder could have been truly great — not simply as the first black attorney general but as a man of principle who stood with the law over politics and friendship. In one of the great lost opportunities in history, Holder will finish his tenure as he began it: a man with great but still unrealized potential.

Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, is a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors.

392 thoughts on “The Holder Years and The Perils Of Politics Over Principle In Government”

  1. Now Elaine AIGs former exec are going to sue the government because they didn’t recieve enough bailout money…. I kid you not….

  2. You’re right…. Maybe if Ernestina Hemsleys show up then… She’ll get a great big Nick Italian Family reception…. You know how everyone is just so happy to see you….

  3. I have no use for Eric Holder. He let the big banks get away with murder/financial fraud.

    Going easy on Eric Holder’s Wall Street inaction
    Press coverage falls short on the attorney general’s failure to prosecute fraud
    By Ryan Chittum
    http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/going_easy_on_holders_wall_str.php

    Excerpt:
    There’s one word missing in too many major press accounts of Eric Holder’s tenure as Obama’s only attorney general: bankers.

    It’s a baffling lapse for outlets like the Washington Post, Bloomberg, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, and ABC News, none of which, in their main stories on the resignation, mentions Holder’s dismal record prosecuting Wall Street fraud in the wake of the biggest financial disaster since the Great Depression. The New York Times drops one line toward the bottom of its front-page story on the news, inaccurately calling it a “liberal” notion that the AG “should have used his power to prosecute those responsible for the financial crisis in 2008.”

    Holder leaves office having been far outclassed by the Bush administration even in prosecuting corporate criminals, despite overseeing the aftermath of one of the biggest orgies of financial corruption in history.

  4. I think he likes the right wing women better than those dads. They are real women. 😉

  7. Annie, no President has screwed this country more than Obama. As a Republican, I will demand that our candidate commit to reviewing every Executive Order and repeal the illegal ones. Honestly, if Obama is not impeached every President in the future could use Executive Orders to bypass Congress. I don’t want that, even if Republicans maintain the office for 20 years. What social issue has not gotten tons of money? Socialism will destroy this country. We must get our financials in order.

  8. @ElaineM

    Oh, and how about this gem from 2010 about fraudulent Democratic voters??? No wonder the Democrats hate all that Voter ID stuff, huh:

    Citizens’ Group Helps Uncover Alleged Rampant Voter Fraud in Houston

    Like most voter watchdog groups, she said, her group started small. They decided to investigate voting fraud in general, not just at the polling places, and at first they weren’t even sure what to look for — and where to look for it.

    “The first thing we started to do was look at houses with more than six voters in them” Engelbrecht said, because those houses were the most likely to have fraudulent registrations attached to them. “Most voting districts had 1,800 if they were Republican and 2,400 of these houses if they were Democratic . . .

    “But we came across one with 24,000, and that was where we started looking.”

    It was Houston’s poorest and predominantly black district, which has led some to accuse the group of targeting poor black areas. But Engelbrecht rejects that, saying, “It had nothing to do with politics. It was just the numbers.”

    The task was overwhelming. With 1.9 million voters and 886 voting precincts, Houston’s Harris County is the second largest county in the country — and the key to Texas elections.

    The group called for help and quickly got 30 donated computers and “tens of thousands of hours” of volunteer work. And then the questions started to arise.

    “Vacant lots had several voters registered on them. An eight-bed halfway house had more than 40 voters registered at its address,” Engelbrecht said. “We then decided to look at who was registering the voters.”

    Their work paid off. Two weeks ago the Harris County voter registrar took their work and the findings of his own investigation and handed them over to both the Texas secretary of state’s office and the Harris County district attorney.

    Most of the findings focused on a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by Sean Caddle, who also worked for the Service Employees International Union before coming to Houston. Among the findings were that only 1,793 of the 25,000 registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid.

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/23/voter-fraud-houston-tea-party-truethevote-texas/

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  9. brave comment calling us a nation of cowards when it comes to race? you were joking.try speaking out on black on black crime or the staggering born out of wedlock rates, or the failure of the welfare state in the inner cities .those that do no matter what their race are branded as racist or uncle toms. just think what 6 years of a non political correct [black] attorney general using the law and his office to address these problems in an open and honest way would have accomplished

  10. A few weeks ago Swarthmore dad and Swathmore dada were both on, Ay lol Nobody i know.

  11. @ElaineM

    Well, why don’t we be bi-partisan about this??? A few excerpts, with full story at the link:

    FBI nabs Texas Democrats accused of using cocaine to buy votes

    The FBI is accusing Texas Democrats of using cocaine to buy votes and it’s all coming out in court.

    Political chicanery and vote-buying in Texas are as old as the state itself, and the latest episode to come to light features purchasing votes with cocaine, marijuana, money, cigarettes and beer, an on-going FBI investigationhas uncovered.

    Two political operatives of a Hidalgo County Commissioner’s campaign manager were charged on Thursday with vote-buying before U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter Ormsby, The Monitor reported.

    The arrests are the latest twist in an 18-month investigation focusing on the 2012 primary election for County Commissioner. The name of the campaign manager and his chief were not disclosed, however, only two candidates ran in that race, A.C. Cuellar Jr., and Democrat Joel Quintanilla. Both have denied even having campaign managers.

    Veronica Saldivar and Belinda Solis, known as politiqueras, paid campaign workers, were each given $25 worth of cocaine, the campaign manager admitted, and told to buy votes with them. Their bond was set at $10,000 and if convicted, each could face five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

    http://www.bizpacreview.com/2014/09/02/fbi-nabs-texas-democrats-accused-of-using-cocaine-to-buy-votes-142843

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  13. Thanks Elaine….

    Yep SWM… Lots of new names here of late….mammie and Sammie …. When will Ernest Hemsleys show up….

    Paul,

    Even if that is true about the tires…. It wouldn’t surprise me if one of your own did it….

  15. Paul, Exactly. Both parties steal votes. Dems own the big cities and that’s where they steal the most votes. Republicans steal in small cities and rural counties.

  16. State rep candidate voted in Illinois and Wisconsin
    http://politics.suntimes.com/article/springfield/state-rep-candidate-voted-illinois-and-wisconsin/mon-09222014-643pm

    Excerpt:
    Republican Kathy Myalls is urging voters to elect her to a seat in the Illinois State Legislature.

    But will she vote for herself?

    It’s a fair question, since records show Myalls has voted in both Illinois and Wisconsin in recent years.

    In one case, she cast a vote in a primary election in Illinois. Then just three months later, records show she voted in Wisconsin to cast a ballot in the state’s recall election. The effort was aimed largely at recalling Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — someone with whom Myalls is pictured on her Facebook page. Myalls then voted in Wisconsin’s presidential general election in 2012 before returning to Illinois to vote the following spring.

    When asked about her vote in the Walker recall, Myalls said in a phone interview:

    “No. I don’t think I did,” she said. “I don’t think they canceled my registration up in Fontana. And that may be what you’re seeing. They didn’t automatically cancel it.”

  17. Obama, et al, were reelected thanks to a groveling media. We found out about the “glitches” in Obamacare in 2013. The fact was there from the original vote. You were not going to keep your plan and doctor unless it met Ocare standards. If media had been honest about that, thousands would not have voted for Obama.

  18. AY,

    Americans for Prosperity tried the same kind of tricks in Wisconsin a few years back.

    AFP Wisconsin ballots have late return date
    http://www.politico.com/blogs/davidcatanese/0811/AFP_Wisconsin_ballots_have_late_return_date.html?showall

    Excerpt:
    Americans for Prosperity is sending absentee ballots to Democrats in at least two Wisconsin state Senate recall districts with instructions to return the paperwork after the election date.

    The fliers, obtained by POLITICO, ask solidly Democratic voters to return ballots for the Aug. 9 election to the city clerk “before Aug. 11.”

    1. Squeeky – if the cat got the form it was a printer error and a mass mailing. We have a case here were the name of a candidate was twice left off the ballot, purely by oversight. They finally decided to run a special election for the office. The elections department was never accused of trying to rig the election or suppress voting, etc.

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