During a Jan. 7 news conference on Capitol Hill, Maryland’s Democrat U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin declared:
“Eric Holder is an experienced and dedicated public servant who will restore trust and confidence in a Department of Justice that recently has strayed far from its role as a non-partisan protector of the rule of law and the civil rights of all Americans. I have no doubt that Mr. Holder will be an attorney general who will serve the American people and not just the White House. He will vigorously enforce the civil rights laws to protect all Americans from unlawful discrimination and help close our nation’s justice gap.”
And speaking of justice – as Sen. Cardin mentioned (along with other participants in this press conference, including the NAACP, the National Council of LaRaza, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the National Women’s Law Center), where was candidate Holder’s alleged devotion to the cause of justice in the case of Mr. Marc Rich?
I looked carefully at the press release issued by Sens. Cardin and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and those four organizations. I could find no mention at all of the Eric Holder outrage in the case of Marc Rich.
How can these two U.S. senators and those four ideally entitled organizations ignore the Eric Holder-Marc Rich scandal, which evoked last month’s editorial in National Review:
“As the Clinton administration’s last deputy attorney general, Holder was a key participant in one of the most disgraceful episodes in the Justice Department’s history: the pardon of Marc Rich, the mega-fraudster and international fugitive. Nor was that the half of it. Over vigorous opposition from prosecutors and the FBI, Holder signed off in 1999 on commutations for 16 unrepentant FALN terrorists who had not even applied for clemency (a prerequisite under DOJ rules) but whose release was thought to improve Hillary Clinton’s appeal to New York’s Puerto Ricans. Holder also supported commutations for two Weather Underground terrorists. His AG nomination confirms that two years of Democratic posturing over the ‘politicization’ of the Justice Department were just that, posturing.”
Page 1 of the Washington Times last month reported:
“Eric H. Holder Jr., then the deputy attorney general, worked with former White House Counsel Jack Quinn to ensure that department officials – particularly federal prosecutors in New York who handled the Rich case – ‘did not have the opportunity to express an opinion on the Rich pardon before it was granted,’ the Republican-led House Government Reform Committee concluded in a 467-page report in 2002.
“The committee’s evidence included an e-mail in which Mr. Holder told Mr. Quinn to ‘go straight’ to the White House and that the ‘timing is good’ for Mr. Rich’s request for a pardon. Normally, pardon requests are reviewed by career prosecutors before a recommendation is forwarded to the White House.
“Mr. Quinn responded in a typewritten note to Mr. Holder, just 10 days before Mr. Clinton issued the pardon, ‘Your saying positive things, I’m told, would make this happen. Thanks for your consideration.’
“Mr. Holder was not available for comment on Wednesday. But he told lawmakers during the investigation that he thought he had done nothing wrong.
“Mr. Holder, the committee also concluded, failed to notify prosecutors under him that the pardon was under consideration and failed to offer ‘any credible justification’ for it.
“Mr. Rich, whose ex-wife gave $1.3 million to the Democratic National Committee, was pardoned by Mr. Clinton on his last day in office. At the time, Mr. Rich and his business partner, Pincus Green, were on the list of the Justice Department’s six most-wanted international fugitives. The pardon was the last major controversy of the Clinton presidency, in part because it was issued over the objection of many senior aides and bypassed the normal Justice Department pardon-vetting process.
“Mr. Rich fled to Switzerland in 1983 after a federal grand jury indicted him on 65 counts of tax fraud, racketeering and tax-evasion charges. He had faced 325 years in jail. Companies owned by Mr. Rich and Mr. Green separately pleaded guilty in 1984 to evading millions of dollars in taxes by concealing profits on oil trading.”
On Jan. 6, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, issued the following statement on nominee Holder:
“He’s had an outstanding academic and professional record, and I acknowledge that early on,” Mr. Specter said of Mr. Holder in a 25-minute speech on the Senate floor. “But aside from these qualifications on Mr. Holder’s resume, there is also the issue of character, and sometimes it is more important for the attorney general to have the stature and the courage to say no instead of to say yes.”
Citing Holder’s role in the pardon of Marc Rich, the clemency to 16 Puerto Rican terrorists and the Justice Department’s rejection in 1997 of an independent counsel to examine accusations of campaign finance abuse by Vice President Al Gore, Senator Specter concluded:
“Further inquiry is warranted on the issue of Mr. Holder’s independence to follow the facts without respect to political bias.”
QUESTION: Will any of our left-wing Old Big Media TV networks try to seek out fugitive Marc Rich – to televise his probable support for Eric Holder as attorney general of the United States?
ANSWER: Ho, Ho, Ho – No!
