Obama Set to Pick the First Black Attorney General, Reports

[evanovitch]

Obama Set to Pick the First Black Attorney General, Reports Say
November 18th, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama is set to appoint Eric Holder attorney general, making him the first African American to hold the position, reports say. Holder, 57, served as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration and was a legal advisor for Obama’s campaign. There is no official word yet from Obama’s camp, but according to Newsweek, after some discussions Obama made an offer to Holder and he accepted. “The announcement is not likely until after Obama announces his choices to lead the Treasury and State Department,” said the magazine. Holder has been publicly critical of the Bush adminstration in the past saying that to combat the “disastrous course” set under his reign, the United States should shut down Guantanamo Bay.

[Yvonne N.]

Re: Obama Set to Pick the First Black Attorney General, Reports

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">He was born, raised and educated through law school in New York City, where his father had immigrated from Barbados. His mother was a homemaker who became secretary to the Episcopal parish priest, and his father was a real estate agent.
</div></div>

caribvoice.org

[Dyoll_73]

Re: Obama Set to Pick the First Black Attorney General, Reports

Should be a smooth confirmation in the Senate, assuming the dems overlook the little his role as legal counsel to Chiquita and the alleged involvement of that company with a 'death squad' down in Columbia.

[kia027]

Re: dem seh im kinda soft on corruption

~~~ and he did a lot of pardons for Bill Clinton in his last days as president~~~

source


Eric H. Holder, Jr., former Deputy Attorney General and senior legal advisor to President-elect Barack Obama, was tapped today to serve as Obama’s Attorney General, Newsweek reports. (Holder also served as co-chief of Obama’s veep selection committee.)

In a cover story in 1997—the same year Clinton nominated Holder for Dep. Attorney General—City Paper questioned Holder’s approach to corruption during his tenure as U.S. Attorney for D.C.

But for all the love Holder has engendered in the community as U.S. Attorney, he has had precious little impact on the city’s endemic municipal corruption.

Holder defended himself to reporter Stephanie Mencimer as follows:

“Certainly, the Dirty Dozen occurred while I was here,” he says, referring to the 12 police officers caught up in an FBI sting operation in 1993 for bribery and other drug charges. “There was the housing case involving the sale of Section 8 authorizations, and there are other things in my mind that I think about our public corruption section and the work that they’ve done on the local side. So I’m not sure there’s anything we have to apologize for, or try to defend. We’ve been as vigilant as we’ve ever been.”

Further complications to this appointment include Holder’s instrumental role in Clinton’s presidential pardon of “billionaire fugitive” Mark Rich, and a June interview with Legal Times in which he said an ascent to A.G. “ain’t gonna happen.”

Just for good measure, a bit of CP prescience, courtesy of Mencimer:

Even without any big corruption trials, in the final analysis, Holder will get what all the District’s U.S. Attorneys get for their trouble here: a better job. Holder’s three and a half years in the District have given him wings. He’s likely to be flying on to the Justice Department soon, where the albatross around his neck will be replaced by one who looks quite a bit like Bill Clinton. Meanwhile, the District will be left with the same old cadre of crooks, a durable group who know that if they bide their time they can outlast just about any U.S. Attorney.