Attorney General Eric Holder is not up to the task
By David Ignatius, WashPost, Published: June 7
People are looking for the wrong “scandal” about Attorney General Eric Holder. The problem with Holder is the plain fact that, in the judgment of a wide range of legal colleagues, he has been a mediocre attorney general.
Holder’s mistakes in management and judgment are clear in the current controversy about leak investigations. He was silent as zealous prosecutors overrode the Justice Department’s guidelines for subpoenaing reporters; he recused himself from the case but bizarrely doesn’t seem to have kept a written record of the recusal; and he failed utterly to anticipate the political flap that erupted when Justice informed the Associated Press that it had collected the call records for more than 20 phone lines.
The leak cases illustrate Holder’s tendency to blow with the prevailing winds. His prosecution of leakers was certainly in the hawkish spirit of a bipartisan anti-leak bill introduced last year by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, which proposed more draconian anti-media measures than anything Holder has done. Justice went with the conservative flow until the leak prosecutions become controversial a few weeks ago — and Holder rediscovered his interest in a shield law.
“Holder substitutes his political judgment for his legal judgment, and his political judgment isn’t very good” is the way one White House official put it to a prominent Washington lawyer recently. That criticism was seconded by a half-dozen other leading Washington lawyers I consulted.
(More here.)
People are looking for the wrong “scandal” about Attorney General Eric Holder. The problem with Holder is the plain fact that, in the judgment of a wide range of legal colleagues, he has been a mediocre attorney general.
Holder’s mistakes in management and judgment are clear in the current controversy about leak investigations. He was silent as zealous prosecutors overrode the Justice Department’s guidelines for subpoenaing reporters; he recused himself from the case but bizarrely doesn’t seem to have kept a written record of the recusal; and he failed utterly to anticipate the political flap that erupted when Justice informed the Associated Press that it had collected the call records for more than 20 phone lines.
The leak cases illustrate Holder’s tendency to blow with the prevailing winds. His prosecution of leakers was certainly in the hawkish spirit of a bipartisan anti-leak bill introduced last year by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, which proposed more draconian anti-media measures than anything Holder has done. Justice went with the conservative flow until the leak prosecutions become controversial a few weeks ago — and Holder rediscovered his interest in a shield law.
“Holder substitutes his political judgment for his legal judgment, and his political judgment isn’t very good” is the way one White House official put it to a prominent Washington lawyer recently. That criticism was seconded by a half-dozen other leading Washington lawyers I consulted.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home