Eric Holder
| Tue Dec. 2, 2008 8:57 AM PST
ERIC HOLDER...Richard Cohen is unhappy with Eric Holder's role in the Marc Rich pardon, and Ezra Klein agrees with him:
This stuff was no great secret. The Obama camp weighed these qualms and dismissed them. Which suggests that Holder's tendency to be a company man was not considered a negative. I'm not one who thinks the attorney general should be some sort of lone renegade within the administration, but he should feel empowered to aggressively push back against abuses of presidential power. Holder's history offers little evidence of that sort of temperament.
I don't have any special brief for Holder one way or the other, but I guess I'd look at this differently. Holder's role in the Rich pardon is obviously disturbing, as he himself has admitted, and there's no doubt it will get raised in his confirmation hearings. But the real question is whether this was an isolated mistake or evidence of a pattern, and so far I've seen no evidence to suggest the latter. If you think his error in the Rich case was so egregious that it ought to disqualify him forever from government service, I guess that's defensible, but it's hard for me to read things that way. If we barred from high office every person who failed even once to stand up to his boss, we'd have a pretty small pool of candidates to choose from.
In fact, not to get too contrarian here, but if Holder learned a lesson from the Rich pardon — and his own response to it suggests he did — it might push him in the direction of being more independent than he otherwise might be. It could end up being a blessing in disguise.
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Comments
I've never understood why all the hand-wringing about Marc Rich. I don't think Republicans want any sort of full investigation into Mr. Rich ... there's plenty of mud in this one for both sides of the aisle. Wasn't Rich's lawyer some guy by the name of Libby?
If I remember aright from the original controversy, it was pretty much ado about nothing. Mr. Rich was convicted of breaking laws that were later removed from the books. The WSJ, along with senior members of Bush senior's administration, supported his pardon (The elder Bush was set to pardon him, but instead pardoned Iran-Contra criminals - which is a real issue.)
Mr. Rich's pardon was supported by other heavy-weights too, the once-head of Mossad and King John of Spain.
Cohen seems to be bringing this up as much for personal reasons as anything else.
The Marc Rich pardon was one of those pseudo-controversies raised by the conservatives and the media during the Clinton Administration. Nobody cares about it anymore. Presdients can pardon whoever they want and there's nothing anybody can do about it, so just get over it already.
Exactly what was the huge problem with the Marc Rich pardon? What inhuman crime did Marc Rich commit? As far as I know, he was accused (never convicted) of tax evasion and illegally dealing with the Iranians during the hostage crisis. You'd be hard-pressed to find a very rich person who doesn't do something shady on their taxes. And our own government (via Oliver North) illegally dealt with the Iranians during another crisis--selling weapons to them, not just oil like Rich was accused of doing.
Furthermore, many legal experts have looked into the matter and have stated publicly that they felt there was no criminal wrong-doing (the pardon still allowed for civil action to be taken against Rich).
The rightwing claimed that the pardon had been bought by Rich's ex-wife but there was an investigation and James Comey found no evidence of wrong-doing.
So please Kevin, explain to us exactly what was so awful about the Rich pardon? Because this seems to me to be yet another case where you are doing nothing but perpetuating a rightwing myth (like when you repeatedly mention how Jimmy Carter was an awful President).
What, exactly, is the big deal about the Marc Rich pardon. The original conviction was a travesty: instead of charging Rich with ordinary currency and tax offenses (where he might have been guilty), a hysterical and fanatically ambitious Federal Prosecutor (does the name Rudolph Guiliani ring a bell?) decided to up the ante almost to the level of high treason. As published White House phone logs proved, the main impetus for the pardon was a personal plea from Prime Minister Barak, who was involved in a fierce election battle with Ariel Sharon. Since it was widely believed that Sharon's election would destroy hopes for a mid-east peace settlement, we were eager to help Barak, as a matter of national interest. This "controversy" has been a fraud from day one
Richard Cohen, 1997:
"With the sentencing of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald has apparently finished his work, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, to make a mountain out of a molehill. At the urging of the liberal press (especially the New York Times), he was appointed to look into a run-of-the-mill leak and wound up prosecuting not the leaker -- Richard Armitage of the State Department -- but Libby, convicted in the end of lying. This is not an entirely trivial matter since government officials should not lie to grand juries, but neither should they be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics. As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off.
Cohen went on to defend Bush's pardon of Libby. Libby should not be "called to account for practicing the dark art of politics" said Cohen. Boys will be boys.
Funny how Cohen is rediscovering his moral judgement on the dark art of politics.
Submitted by bmaz (not verified) on Tue Dec. 2, 2008 10:11 AM PST.
For starters folks, this is not about Marc Rich, it is about Eric Holder's willingness to service power as opposed to questioning it. There have been a series of posts at Firedoglake on Eric Holder by Looseheadprop, a former DOJ official who knows very well the score on Eric Holder, and it is NOT favorable. She is right. There is a post by her on the front page, probably one or two down in the queue by now with links to her prior posts. There is also a post I did there either Friday or Saturday by the name of "Fold The Holder Nomination" that explains a fair amount and has links to all of both mine and LHP's relevant pieces. I would supply links, but that gets my comment caught up in moderation.
Holder is the wrong guy for the job at DOJ right now. Another day and situation, maybe; but with all that ails DOJ now, and the task to clean up the mess of the rich and powerful, he is the wrong man.
I had commented on this here a few hours ago, but that post seems to have vanished. bmaz is exactly right about this, though. I'm not familiar with the specific comments he references over at Firedoglake or Looseheadprop, but in addition to the Rich pardon, Holder's private practice work on behalf of Chiquita Brands International -- which had hired a Colombian right-wing paramilitary organization, listed on the State Department's terror organizations, that murdered 173 of Chiquita's workers -- is one more example of the point Cohen makes about Holder's lack of judgment when it comes time to say no to powerful interests on the wrong side of the law. So do two incidents constitute a pattern? I don't know. But considering the travesty that the Justice Department has become, I'm certainly not interested in waiting for a third.
but he should feel empowered to aggressively push back against abuses of presidential power
Abuse of presidential power? WTF? Issuing pardons is an exercise of constitutional presidential authority.
Now where's the "abuse" part?
I'm going to throw my lot in with those who think that the Rich pardon was much ado about very little. It was part and parcel with the Republican war against Clinton. Given the wide range of those who thought this was a wildly overblown prosecution and given the international interest in the pardon it hardly looks like a pay for play deal.
Even in the worst possible light the Rich pardon pales in comparison with giving a free pass to treason ala Iran-Contra or, god help up, Nixon.
I really don't understand the imperative some feel to assign moral consequences to an attorney's representation of a client. Are we suggesting that a Chiquita's attorneys should have withheld competent legal advice? That they should have advocated for harsher penalties?
Even companies that break the law are entitled to hire competent representation. Giving advice after the fact isn't the same thing as approval of the crime.
I really don't understand the imperative some feel to assign moral consequences to an attorney's representation of a client. Are we suggesting that a Chiquita's attorneys should have withheld competent legal advice? That they should have advocated for harsher penalties?
A couple of points, both of which are raised in the Murillo article to which I linked. First, Holder continues to represent Chiquita in the civil suit that grew out of the criminal case. If he's confirmed as AG, there's reason to be concerned that the Justice Department won't press the investigation of Chiquita's use of paramilitary thugs to exterminate workers it doesn't like.
Second, this completely undercuts Obama's message about the primacy of human rights, which he spoke to specifically, as (again) the article makes clear:
... the opposition to Holder's nomination to the top position at Justice should not stop with this sordid history, one that perhaps can be excused as the obligation of a lawyer to defend his or her client regardless of the alleged crime. The disappointment in Obama's pick for AG should stem from the President-elect's strong words during the campaign in defense of human rights, particularly for those of workers in Colombia. On several occasions, including in the last presidential debate held at Hofstra University just three weeks before the election, the Democratic Candidate said he opposed the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement precisely on the grounds of the human rights violations carried out consistently against trade unionists in Colombia, and the ongoing impunity that has followed in most of those crimes.
Submitted by bmaz (not verified) on Tue Dec. 2, 2008 9:15 PM PST.
Quaker and Junebug. The thing is, Holder completely sold out and screwed over his client in Chiquita. His client was indeed the company and its shareholders. The culpable parties in the mess were not the company, which is a fictional being, nor the innocent shareholders; rather the guilty parties were several executives and board members, most notably Rod Hills. Holder skated the culpable individual at the expense of massive fines borne by the company and its shareholders. So, yes, I do think his representation in the matter was despicable, should be held against him, constituted a gross conflict of interest and is indicative of Holder's proclivity to screw the little guy in order to service gross and corrupt power. It is a pattern, and a wrong one for the position of Attorney General.
Does nobody ever wonder why Marc Rich has never accepted the terms of this pardon? I mean, it's such a good deal for him, right? Why has he refused it?
Because first of all, he would have to pay a $100 million fine, then he would have to agree to waive the statute of limitations on cicil cases brought against him, and he would have to return to the USA to face those civil cases. He would also not be allowed to use his pardon for criminal charges as a defense in those civil cases.
Top it off with the fact that the criminal charges are not likely to stick, especially under appeal if not initially. The reason he ran was not the criminal charges so much as the civil cases, because he would almost certainly prevail in the criminal case but almost certainly lose the civil cases.
That's why Marc Rich has never taken Clinton up on Clinton's "generous" pardon.
Let's first remember that it wasn't Eric Holder who did the pardoning of Marc Rich, and it wasn't done at his insistence. it was Marc Rich's lawyers and the friendship that the Clintons had with Marc Rich's wife, who was one of their fundraisers. I find it rather cheap that Eric Holder is recieving all this scrutiny, while Hillary Clinton isn't, where all these Clinton pardons are concerned!
