When Republicans controlled the White House, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee borked Bob Bork, rhetorically lynched Clarence Thomas, shelved Miguel Estrada, disappeared Jim Haynes, and tried to waterboard Michael Mukasey. The Committee’s hearing room remains the place where GOP nominations go to die. But with a Democrat about to move into the Oval Office, it’s apparently time for Change.
That should work quite nicely for Eric Holder, President-elect Obama’s nominee for attorney general. It’s a Change in the committee’s basic approach: from trumping up charges to sink impeccably qualified nominees to whitewashing history so a checkered nominee can sail through.
Of course, there was a time when Democrats, and even the
New York Times, were
embarrassed by Holder. That was eight years ago. And it wasn’t over failing to pay taxes or employing illegal immigrants—comparative trifles that the Judiciary Committee has nevertheless been known to treat as disqualifiers, not venial sins.
No, Holder’s transgressions involve matters directly related to his official duties. They involve gross misconduct while performing the same public duties Holder is now seeking to assume. They involve his role in Bill Clinton’s acceptance of gargantuan political contributions in exchange for a presidential pardon of financier fraudster Marc Rich, once among the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted fugitives.
Beginning on Thursday, the Judiciary Committee will convene a hearing to consider Holder’s nomination. Will the committee press him on Marc Rich? Will they insist on answers to their questions? I suggest queries like these, though I already know the answers:
Was Holder the linchpin of one of the most corrupt episodes in Justice Department history? He absolutely was: As Clinton pondered and finally pardoned Rich, in contravention of every DOJ clemency guideline, Deputy Attorney General Holder—then hoping to become Attorney General Holder in a Gore administration—ran interference against his own Justice Department in a transparent effort to ingratiate himself with Jack Quinn, Rich’s lawyer and an Al Gore confidant.
Did Holder advise Rich’s legal team and advocate on the fugitive’s behalf against his own Justice Department prosecutors—even before there was a pardon application? You bet he did. And all the current rationalizing about how Holder can’t be held responsible for Clinton’s abuse of the pardon power is specious.
Holder is accountable for his shameful participation in Clinton’s pardon decision—the pardon, as Clinton himself later
said, wouldn’t have happened without Holder’s green light.
But even if that weren’t so, there remains the stubborn fact that, long before Rich applied for a pardon, Holder was working with the fugitive’s team and against his own Justice Department. The
report of a congressional investigation no one seems to want to read explains it all in gory detail.
Was fugitivity a crime at the time? Yes, it was (and is) a felony under Section 1073 of the federal penal code.
Was it Justice Department policy that prosecutors should refuse to negotiate with indicted fugitives until those fugitives surrendered to face the charges, just as every American who knows he has been indicted by a grand jury is expected to do? Yes, of course it was. Unless we want to encourage criminals to become fugitives, what other conceivable DOJ policy could there be?
Was that the policy for all fugitives—regardless of whether the government had spent goo-gobs of the public’s money trying to apprehend them for 20 years? It sure was.
Did Holder tell Quinn—again, before there ever was a pardon application—that he thought it was “ridiculous” for New York prosecutors to refuse to meet with a fugitive’s lawyers? Did he, in addition, give Quinn advice on how to pressure those prosecutors into negotiations aimed at settling the case without jail time? Yes, and yes.
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