Eric Holder, Law Enforcer or Criminal Endorser?

Despite large controversy, President-elect Barrack Obama nominated Eric Holder for the position of U.S. Attorney General on December 1, 2008. During the vetting process there was a great deal of pushback from many congressmen and gun rights advocates because of his questionable past. However, Obama awarded Holder the position regardless. Since President Obama's vetting process appears to find some of the most criminal, corruptible, & radical people to ever hold a White House I.D., how does Eric Holder compare with those of Tim Geithner, Van Jones, Mark Lloyd, Cass Sustein, & John Holdren?

Eric Holder Under President Clinton:

While working under the Clinton Administration in 1999, Holder worked to release 16 members of the violent Armed Forces of National Liberation 'terrorists', as deemed by the F.B.I.

Under the Clinton Administration, Holder was appointed Deputy Attorney General in Janet Reno’s Justice Department. From DiscovertheNetworks.org:

"As Deputy Attorney General, Holder, as The Washington Post explained, “was the gatekeeper for presidential pardons.” Indeed, Holder was a key figure entrusted with the task of vetting the Clinton administration’s 176 last-minute pardons in January 2001. The beneficiaries of those pardons included such notables as former Weather Underground members Susan Rosenberg (who was involved in the deadly 1981 armed robbery of a Brink’s armored car) and Linda Evans (who had used false identification to buy firearms, harbored a fugitive, and was in possession of 740 pounds of dynamite at the time of her arrest in 1985)."

This is the same Weather Underground as founded by Bill Ayers and Jeff Jones and responsible for several bombings including a U.S. State building. The group also sympathized with the radically dangerous Black Panthers of the 1960's.

Also, among Holder's list of pardons was the fugitive oil broker and tax cheat Marc Rich. Rich hid $100 million in oil profits of illegal purchases from Iran during the American Trade Embargo by creating dummied transactions in off-shore corporations. He fled to Switzerland to avoid prosecution for illegal oil purchases, 51 counts of racketeering, wire fraud, tax fraud, and tax evasion. Marc Rich's wife was also involved in such dealings:

"Over the years, Rich's ex-wife Denise had funneled at least $1.5 million to Clinton interests. Some $1.2 million went to the Democratic National Committee, $75,000 went to Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign, and $450,000 helped finance the Bill Clinton Library in Arkansas.  Mrs. Rich also had given expensive gifts to the Clintons and, according to some rumors, had a very close relationship with the President."

Read more on the contacts between the Rich's and Eric Holder.

Eric Holder's Recent Actions:

Eric Holder's support for terrorists has even continued during his transition into his current position as U.S. Attorney General for the Obama Administration. Michelle Malking's writes on Holder's law firm of Covington & Burling:

"Covington & Burling’s Gitmo bar roster has included some of the most radical detainee advocates; see David Remes, who peeled down to his underwear at a press conference in Yemen to draw attention to his clients’ plight and Marc Falkoff, who published a book of detainee poetry and who, in the book’s intro, compared their heroic struggle to the Jews held in concentration camps and Japanese Americans held in internment camps during WWII. [One of Falkoff's "gentle, thoughtful" young poets--a Kuwaiti "cleared for release" and repatriated in 2005--blew himself up in a truck bomb in Mosul last March, killing 13 Iraqi army soldiers and wounding 42 others.]"

Holder has also been a staunch opponent to the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center:

"Holder has condemned the Guantanamo Bay detention center as an “international embarrassment,” even though detainees there are treated more humanely than even the Geneva Conventions require. Despite evidence to the contrary, he has accused the U.S. government of having “authorized torture and … let fear take precedence over the rule of law.” And he has demanded an immediate end to warrantless eavesdropping by intelligence and counterterrorism officials."

Toward the beginning of Holder's term as President Obama's new Attorney General, Holder had made clear his wishes to "reinstitute the ban on assault weapons, " and his disdain for 2nd Amendment gun rights. In fact, Holder's record against gun rights goes all the way back to his time in the Clinton Administration and is a matter of record.

Holder has also made clear his views on racism in the U.S., and despite the decades of progress made by civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, Eric Holder still considers the U.S. a "Nation of Cowards." He recently carried those views into action by supporting the decision to drop the charges of voter intimidation committed by members of the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia.

From Wall Street Journal:

Justice spokesman Alejandro Miyar says the dismissal was "based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law." But Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.), has been asking for more information. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Welch, for example, claims in a July 13 letter to Mr. Wolf that charges against the New Black Panther Party itself were dropped because there wasn't "evidentiary support" to prove they "directed" the intimidation. But Mr. Wolf notes in a letter sent to Justice that one defendant, Black Panther Party Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz, said on Fox News just after the election that his activities at the polling station were part of a nationwide effort. Mr. Shabazz added that the Black Panther activities in Philadelphia were justified due to "an emergency situation."

FOX NEWS reports the actions of the New Black Panthers:

A poll watcher who provided an affidavit to prosecutors in the case noted that Bartle Bull, who worked as a civil rights lawyer in the south in the 1960's and is a former campaign manager for Robert Kennedy, said it was the most blatant form of voter intimidation he had ever seen.

In his affidavit, obtained by FOX News, Bull wrote "I watched the two uniformed men confront voters and attempt to intimidate voters. They were positioned in a location that forced every voter to pass in close proximity to them. The weapon was openly displayed and brandished in plain sight of voters."

He also said they tried to "interfere with the work of other poll observers ... whom the uniformed men apparently believed did not share their preferences politically," noting that one of the panthers turned toward the white poll observers and said "you are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker."

In an unprecedented move, Eric Holder chose not to try the 9/11 master-mind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other terrorists in a military tribunal like the U.S. has historically done with prisoners of war. Instead, he chose to try the terrorists in a civilian court in Manhattan placing not only our country at greater risk, but the already 9/11 devastated citizens of New York City. In addition, as per procedure for the capturing of prisoners of war, these terrorists were not read their Miranda Rights. Up until now, these rights were reserved for citizens & guests of the United States. In a civilian court, such issues as Miranda Rights have brought many cases to be dismissed.

Monday, Nov.16th Gov. David Paterson has come out against Obama and Holder saying,

"This is not a decision that I would have made. I think terrorism isn't just attack, it's anxiety and I think you feel the anxiety and frustration of New Yorkers who took the bullet for the rest of the country."

He continued, "Our country was attacked on its own soil on September 11, 2001 and New York was very much the epicenter of that attack. Over 2,700 lives were lost," he said. "It's very painful. We're still having trouble getting over it. We still have been unable to rebuild that site and having those terrorists so close to the attack is gonna be an encumbrance on all New Yorkers."

Senator Durbin, Holder, and Obama now push to house 100 of the 215 terrorist detainees in a small prison in the rural community of Thomson, Illinois, 150 miles west of Chicago. Over the week-end, Republicans including senate candidate Mark Kirk, criticized the plan to house detainees in Illinois. In a letter drafted to President Obama where Mark Kirk wrote,

“If your Administration brings Al Qaeda terrorists to Illinois, our state and the Chicago Metropolitan Area will become ground zero for Jihadist terrorist plots, recruitment and radicalization," adding, "As home to America's tallest building, we should not invite Al Qaeda to make Illinois its number one target.”

Eric Holder has a long record of showing support for terrorists, be it the Weather Underground or those who obliterated the Twin Towers. Bringing prisoners of war to a civilian court seriously breaks historical precedence, as well as opens the U.S. up to additional forms of terrorism. This, however, seems of no interest to Holder. It also works to provide terrorists with rights no prisoner of war should ever be granted, the rights of a U.S. civilian trial and the chance to be found innocent. In addition to Holder's aggressive stands against gun rights and support of terrorists, it leaves many to question if he also feels a bow coming on.

Links:
Eric Holder on DiscovertheNetworks.org, Muckety, SourceWatch.