Questions loom over attorney-general pick
By Edward Luce in Washington
Published: November 19 2008 23:00 | Last updated: November 19 2008 23:00
If Senate Republicans want to make a fuss about Eric Holder in the confirmation hearings early next year they have a ready-made issue. The likely next attorney-general, who would be the first African-American to hold that post, was the lawyer who gave Bill Clinton the controversial “neutral leaning to favourable” advice on whether to pardon Marc Rich, a fugitive from justice, in the dying days of the Clinton administration.
Senior Republicans, including Arlen Specter, who is on the Senate judiciary committee, have already signaled they would question Mr Holder over the Rich pardon. Meanwhile, left-wing groups were raising questions on Wednesday about Mr Holder’s subsequent role in private law practice in getting big corporations off the hook, including Chiquita Brands International, which the Justice Department was investigating for paying protection money to right-wing death squads in Colombia.
Few doubt, however, that Mr Holder will survive tough questioning for the post given his otherwise impressive career as a US attorney in the District of Colombia, as a senior judge and as deputy attorney-general under Mr Clinton. Mr Holder struck up a friendship with Barack Obama at a Washington dinner party and came to play an important role in the Obama campaign – both as an advisor on legal issues and later as the joint head, with Caroline Kennedy, of Mr Obama’s vice-presidential search committee.
As attorney-general, Mr Holder would take over a highly demoralized justice department that has suffered from strong political interference in the last eight years. One of his first tasks would likely be to provide Mr Obama advice on the legal complexities of closing the Guantanamo Bay detention centre – a central promise of the Obama campaign that could prove hard to deliver in practice.
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