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Eric H. Holder, a career federal prosecutor, judge and Washington lawyer, was sworn in Tuesday as the U.S.’s first black attorney general with a pledge to revitalize the Justice Department.
Eric Holder
Holder, addressing cheering department employees prior to his swearing-in, said he would restore the agency “to what it once was and what it always has to be.” Holder, who held the No. 2 job at the department under President Bill Clinton, was greeted with applause and shouts of “welcome back.”
His supporters hailed his elevation to be the nation’s top law enforcement official as a historic moment. Appointed by President Barack Obama, Holder was confirmed 75-21 by the U.S. Senate Monday evening with Republicans casting all the negative votes.
Holder “has the character” to serve as attorney general and “passes any fair confirmation standard,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who heads the Judiciary Committee, said, urging senators to be on “the right side of history.”
As attorney general, Holder will play a major role in redrafting rules for detaining and interrogating suspected terrorists, as well as advising Obama on whether to try them in civilian or military courts. He may also be asked, at the conclusion of a criminal investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency’s destruction of interrogation videotapes, to decide whether to press any criminal charges.
While Holder won bipartisan support, 21 of the Senate’s 41 Republicans, mostly representing Western states, opposed him. Several cited his defense of Washington’s ban on handguns, struck down last year by the Supreme Court. Holder’s advocacy made it “awfully difficult” to represent a Western state and support him, South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune said after the vote.
At his confirmation hearings Holder also was challenged over his role in the 2001 pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich when he was Clinton’s deputy attorney general.
Supporters lauded Holder’s three-decade law-enforcement career. Democrats said he would restore morale at a Justice Department frayed by allegations of political interference that led Alberto Gonzales to resign as President George W. Bush’s attorney general in 2007.
“Political manipulation has undercut the Justice Department in its mission and shaken public confidence,” Leahy said. Holder “will pursue the Justice Department’s vital mission with skill, integrity, independence and a commitment to the rule of law.”
Republican opponents pointed to Holder’s experience as evidence he failed to withstand political pressure from the Clinton White House when he acquiesced in the pardon of Rich, who fled to Switzerland following a 1983 tax-fraud indictment.
Holder “should have known better,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican. He said Holder “allowed his good judgment to be overridden by political influence.”
Republicans also challenged Holder’s 1999 recommendation to shorten the prison sentences of 16 members of a Puerto Rican nationalist group that claimed responsibility for a wave of bombings in the U.S. over more than three decades.
Holder was also faulted for recommending against appointing an independent counsel to investigate political fund-raising by Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore.
Republicans had forced a week’s delay in the committee vote, saying they wanted answers to questions on Holder’s views on a variety of issues, including what interrogation tactics used by the CIA amounted to torture.
Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 15 that waterboarding, which simulates drowning by pouring water onto the face of a subject under questioning, was torture. The CIA has acknowledged it used the tactic to question several al-Qaida suspects seized after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Holder’s characterization of waterboarding as torture prompted questions about whether he would permit prosecutions of CIA agents who used the interrogation tactic, which was authorized by Bush and the Justice Department.
Asked at the hearing about possible prosecutions of former Bush administration officials who sanction such tactics, Holder said, “We will follow the evidence, the facts, the law.” Still, Holder said the Justice Department won’t “criminalize policy differences” with the Bush administration.
Missouri’s Christopher Bond, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said last week Holder gave him “assurances that he understands how the system works.” Holder “will not pursue intelligence agents who operated under the authority of laws set forth” in Justice Department legal opinions and presidential directives, said Bond, who met twice with Holder.
Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said Monday he opposed Holder in part because he fears intelligence officials will “play it safe” rather than risk prosecution from a Holder-led Justice Department for aggressively pursuing al-Qaida terrorists. He also accused Holder of shifting his views from 2002 when, the senator said, the nominee supported Bush administration policies on detaining suspected terrorists.
In a floor speech, Bond said he was convinced that “Holder fully supports an aggressive stand against terrorists.”
Holder won endorsement from police organizations, former FBI Director Louis Freeh and William P. Barr, who served as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush.
Freeh, who criticized Holder’s role in the Rich pardon and his recommendation against a special prosecutor to investigate Gore’s fund-raising, testified that the lessons Holder learned from past mistakes would make him a better attorney general. He said the pardon was a “corrupt act, but it was not an act by Eric Holder.”
Holder has said he regrets he didn’t learn more about the Rich case before telling White House lawyers that he was “neutral, leaning towards favorable” on the pardon, which Clinton issued as he left the presidency.
Congressional committees and the Justice Department investigated whether the pardon was a favor to Rich’s former wife in return for donations to Clinton’s presidential library.
