Eric Holder
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Eric H. Holder, Jr., (born 1951), is a senior legal advisor to Barack Obama and his campaign for the presidency. Along with Caroline Kennedy and Jim Johnson, he serves on Senator Obama's vice presidential selection committee.
He was born in 1951 in Queens, NY; his parents emigrated from Barbados. He was educated at Columbia University earning a B.A. in 1973 and a J.D. from the law school in 1976. After graduating form law school worked he worked in the U.S. Justice Department as a trial attorney from 1977 to 1988. He was then appointed by President Ronald Reagan as a member of the Supreme Court of District of Columbia. In 1993 he was appointed as the first black U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia by President Bill Clinton.
Holder was born and raised in a working-class section of Queens, New York. His parents had both emigrated from Barbados. By virtue of his scholarship, he was accepted into the academically elite Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, and after graduation he enrolled at Columbia University. There he majored in American history, earning top grades, and he spent his spare time absorbing black culture at such notable Harlem landmarks as the Apollo Theater and the Abyssinian Baptist Church. Feeling a responsibility toward fellow black Americans who were less fortunate than himself, Holder began spending his Saturday mornings at a Harlem youth center and taking selected young people on trips around the city. He joined the Concerned Black Men, a national organization dedicated to helping minority youngsters.
Holder received his bachelor's degree in 1973, and immediately was accepted into Columbia's law school. When he graduated from that institution in 1976, he decided to join the Department of Justice. At the time he figured he would work there two or three years and then take a position in a private firm. Holder joined a relatively new division at Justice, the Public Integrity Unit. "It was formed with Watergate still ringing in everyone's ears," he told the Chicago Tribune.
The Public Integrity attorneys were charged with prosecuting high-level corruption cases, often involving respectable public figures. Among those Holder helped to prosecute were former South Carolina congressman John W. Jenrette--in the notorious "Abscam" case in the late 1970s--and a Philadelphia judge who accepted monetary gifts to "fix" cases. The list of people Holder prosecuted while with Public Integrity included Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents, politicians, organized crime figures, and even a fellow Justice Department lawyer. The job Holder thought he would stay in for two years consumed one dozen years of his life.
In 1988, President Ronald Reagan appointed Holder to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. The rotating judgeship involved deciding every imaginable kind of case, from murders and armed robberies to nonpayment of child support and school truancy. The job proved particularly difficult for a man committed to helping African Americans in the city.
Holder told the Washington Post that he became painfully aware that most of the defendants in his courtroom were "young black guys, 18 to 25." He said: "Conceptually, yeah, I knew that's what it was going to be because it's a city that's 70 per cent black, and black males are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system. I guess the reality of it struck me after a while. I mean, it's not an easy thing to deal with, if you are a person who's concerned about the black community, to see what ought to be the future standing before you charged with some sort of criminal offense."
In a Washington Post profile of Holder that followed him through several weeks on the Superior Court bench, the beleaguered justice pondered the African American plight. "I'm black, and I suppose that helps, but I led quite a different life from a lot of the people who come before me as defendants," he said. "Yet there's always a certain something that transcends economic barriers. There's almost a sense that being black and middle class means you've got your feet in both worlds.... Racism is alive and well in this country, but that doesn't excuse or justify the acts of the people who come before you. Every person who comes before you as an adult and talks about the deprived life he's had, there are 10, 15, 20 people from that same neighborhood who are just trying to make it, and those are the people who are the victims."
Holder's sentiments as a judge--both sympathetic and pragmatic--helped endear him to the District of Columbia's political leaders. Many of these politicians felt that the district should have a black U.S. attorney, preferably a local citizen who had demonstrated an allegiance to the area. Holder was just that citizen, and he had even worked at the Department of Justice. After the presidential swearing-in of Bill Clinton in 1993, congressional delegate Norton commissioned a panel of Washington, DC lawyers and civic activists to make recommendations for the District's U.S. attorney slot. The panel chose Holder, and Norton passed his name along to the president. Holder was one of three candidates interviewed for the position, and the only qualm expressed about him was his lack of leadership experience.
In 1993 Eric H. Holder, Jr. joined the ranks of top-level federal prosecutors when he was named U.S. attorney for Washington, DC. Holder, who was appointed by President Clinton, is the first black ever to serve as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, a region that is more than 70 percent black. Holder's confirmation by Congress was seen as a positive step toward greater self-determination for the crime-ridden area.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, the district's non-voting Congressional representative, told the Washington Post that under Holder, "I think people will see the criminal justice system, far more than in the past, as working directly for them, because a man who comes from them and has been committed to them has been made U.S. Attorney." For his part, Holder merely stated in the Chicago Tribune: "This is probably the most interesting legal job in Washington, if not the country."
Late in 1993, Clinton announced that he had chosen Holder to be Washington, DC's first black U.S. attorney. In an interview with the Washington Post, Holder responded to the leadership issue that had concerned some of his supporters. "In some ways, I came in as prepared as I could have been because of my 12 years in Public Integrity," he said. "I think potentially I'm a better U.S. attorney now than I was then, from being on the bench for five years." Asked to assess the impact of a highly visible position on his career, he added: "I guess the reality is there is something personally at stake for me. You have to do the investigating and just call it."
Publicity was waiting for Holder almost the very day he began his new job. Even though he was appointed by a Democratic president, he was expected to preside over a complicated Justice Department investigation of fraud involving the post office in the House of Representatives. An influential congressman, Illinois Democrat Dan Rostenkowski, was the subject of the investigation and has since been indicted on charges that he misused official House accounts.
Rostenkowski, as chairman of the congressional Ways and Means Committee, was in a position to help the Clinton administration to implement its agenda for health care reform. Nonetheless, Holder persisted with the investigation and even widened its scope. He told the Washington Post that matters of criminal prosecution must be handled without regard to partisan politics. "The idea that a Democratic U.S. attorney is going to do something different than a Republican U.S. attorney is pretty close to ridiculous," he observed.
He later served as Deputy Attorney General of the United States under U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. He served in this position until the end of the Clinton presidency. However, he served as acting U.S. Attorney General under President George W. Bush due to the fact that John Ashcroft was not confirmed until a few weeks into the Bush presidency.He now works as an attorney at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington D.C. However, in late 2007 he joined the Senator Barack Obama's political campaign for the presidency as a senior legal advisor. He is also serving on a vice-presidential selection committee for the Obama campaign, along with Democratic strategist James A. Johnson and Caroline Kennedy.
He is also considered to be a leading candidate for U.S. Attorney General under an Obama Administration along with Former Senator John Edwards, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, Alabama Congressman Artur Davis, and Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm. If he were appointed to that position he would be the first black U.S. Attorney General in U.S. history.
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http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5isBO0YLB4RZ-Hsgr6GtpDf3HzmbQD913IBI00Holder's reputation dinged by Marc Rich pardonBy PETE YOST – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON (AP) —
The last time Washington attorney Eric Holder participated in a high-profile vetting, it was for fugitive financier Marc Rich.
The episode in 2001 became the final scandal of the Clinton administration and landed Holder, at the time the No. 2 official at the Justice Department, in the middle of a congressional investigation.
Now Holder, a co-chairman of Barack Obama's campaign, is one of three big names who will lead the search for a potential running mate for the presumed Democratic presidential nominee.
The others are Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, and longtime Washington insider Jim Johnson.
In the Clinton pardon scandal, Holder was deputy attorney general when his duties intersected with the efforts of Rich's lawyer, Jack Quinn, who had been White House counsel earlier in the Clinton administration.
The entire matter was handled in an unorthodox manner — on a straight line from Rich's lawyer to the White House, with a consulting role for Holder.
Later, Holder said he told White House counsel Beth Nolan the day before the pardon was issued that he was "neutral, leaning toward favorable" in regard to the pardon. He said he and Nolan "never had a prolonged conversation about the matter."
To make matters worse, Holder had asked Quinn for his help in becoming attorney general in the event then-Vice President Al Gore won the 2000 election.
Rich did not even qualify for a pardon under Justice Department guidelines, which say no pardons can be requested until five years after completion of a sentence in a criminal case.
Prosecutors on the Rich case testified that no one consulted with them before a recommendation went to the president on the Rich pardon.
Rich has been based in Switzerland since 1983, just before he was indicted in the United States, accused of tax evasion on more than $100 million in income, fraud and participating in illegal oil deals with Iran.
Members of Congress pointed out that Rich's ex-wife, Denise, visited the White House more than a dozen times during Clinton's presidency and contributed an estimated $450,000 to the president's library foundation, $1.1 million to the Democratic Party and at least $109,000 to Hillary Rodham Clinton's bid for the Senate.
"Everything about it seems sleazy," Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., said at the time.
Rep. Henry Waxman, then senior Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and now its chairman, called the Rich pardon an end run around the judicial process.In the end, Holder told Congress he would have tried to stop the Rich pardon if he had known the full details of the fugitive financier's case. Holder said he did not pay much attention to Rich's case amid a flood of pardon requests that came to the Justice Department in Clinton's last days in office.
Quinn and Holder denied that anything untoward or illegal had been done by them or anyone else that they knew of, and the passage of time has restored whatever damage to Holder's reputation occurred at the time.
Seven and a half years after the most controversial incident of his legal career, Holder enjoys a stellar reputation among his Washington colleagues.
One of them, Bob Bennett, said Wednesday that "Eric Holder has proven to be one of our country's outstanding lawyers and a man of unimpeachable integrity and nothing about the Marc Rich affair would undercut my views on that."
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5isBO0YLB4RZ-Hsgr6GtpDf3HzmbQD913IBI00
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