Attorney General Eric Holder accused The Daily Caller on Tuesday of trying to manufacture a campaign to force him from office.
“You guys need to — you need to stop this,” Holder told a reporter for the conservative-oriented news organization. “It’s not an organic thing that’s just happening. You guys are behind it.”
Screenshot from today's Daily Caller
Holder expressed his annoyance after a ceremonial event at the White House when a Daily Caller reporter confronted him. The Daily Caller’s headline about Tuesday’s confrontation declared that “Holder Loses Control,” although Holder merely pointed his finger and glared at a Daily Caller reporter and, according to a recording of the encounter posted on the publication’s website, did not raise his voice.
More than 50 Republican House members have called for Holder’s resignation in the aftermath of Operation Fast and Furious, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives gun-trafficking investigation that apparently let hundreds of guns go to Mexico with inadequate efforts to track them. Many of the weapons are believed to have wound up with Mexican drug cartels, and some were found at the scene of a shootout that killed a Border Patrol agent last December.
Holder has called the failed “gun walking” tactic unacceptable and has said he didn’t know the weapons were being sent across the border. His explanations have not mollified his GOP critics in the House, where there has appeared to be more anti-Holder sentiment than in the Senate.
A few senators, most notably Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, have expressed dissatisfaction with Holder’s explanations about Fast and Furious while stopping short of demanding his departure (see Main Justice’s report).
The Daily Caller asserted that Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) on Tuesday became the first senator to declare that Holder should quit. But the news site did not accompany its assertion with any supporting quote, a glaring omission by conventional journalism standards. Isakson’s office did not immediately respond to a request by Main Justice for clarification. By mid-day Wednesday, the senator’s website did not carry any statement demanding Holder’s resignation.
The more liberal-oriented Media Matters website said The Daily Caller is trying to manufacture a story, rather than cover one: “Holder is right: This isn’t a grassroots movement of conservatives calling for Holder to step down, it’s a concerted effort by a supposed media organization to push him out,” Media Matters said.\
The Daily Caller was founded by pundit Tucker Carlson and has been likened to a conservative version of the liberal-leaning Huffington Post.
Federal authorities are taking the lead in investigating child sex-abuse allegations against former Syracuse University associate men’s basketball coach Bernie Fine, with the Onondaga County district attorney’s office cooperating in the inquiry.
The Secret Service, which is usually associated with the protection of presidents and the pursuit of money-counterfeiters, is leading the investigation under the direction of Richard S. Hartunian, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York, Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said on Monday, according to a report in The Syracuse Post-Standard.
“The involvement of the Secret Service indicates there is an element of the case dealing with computers,” The New York Times reported. Columbia University law professor Daniel C. Richman told The Times that a recent emphasis on prosecuting child pornography and exploitation has moved the agency to offer help to local investigations that might involve those issues. The agency also has expertise in computer forensics, which could explain the removal of a computer from Fine’s house, The Times said.
Fine, 65, was fired by the university over the weekend. Three young men have accused him of molesting them years ago. But Fine has not been charged, and he has denied the accusations.
One facet of the investigation concerns whether the incidents in question occurred too long ago to be prosecuted, Fitzpatrick told the Post-Standard. “The U.S. Attorney is, as I am, interested in finding out if there are any prosecutable victims,” Fitzpatrick said.
The Secret Service, Syracuse Police and New York State Police searched Fine’s home on Friday, removing some pictures and filing cabinets. They also looked through his trash.
Members of the Senate, true to the old trope that their chamber is the saucer that cools the hot passions of the more fiery House of Representatives, are notably declining to call for Attorney General Eric Holder’s resignation over the botched Operation Fast and Furious gun-tracking effort, the conservative political website The Daily Caller writes.
But Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) continues to say the highest ranking official with knowledge of the program should step down, the website reports.
That puts Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who overseas the Criminal Division, in an uncomfortable position. Breuer has conceded he knew about a gun-walking operation during the George W. Bush administration, but has testified before Congress that the Justice Department agency leading the effort provided him with inaccurate information about Fast and Furious.
Fast and Furious was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is part of the Justice Department. It was a law enforcement effort to trace weapons from straw buyers in the U.S. as they made their way to drug cartels in Mexico. ATF lost track of the guns, allowing some 2000 weapons to flow un-monitored across the border into Mexico. One of the guns purchased in the U.S. was found at the scene of shootout in Arizona that left a Border Patrol agent dead.
Any hopes Breuer may have had of succeeding Holder as the nation’s top law enforcement officer in a putative second Obama term have been dashed by the debacle, as angry Senate Republicans are unlikely to confirm him. Holder in a Nov. 8 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing expressed support for Breuer, saying he did not “expect to hear a resignation offer” from him.
Meanwhile, a potential primary opponent of senior Judiciary Committee member Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is calling for Hatch to demand’s Holder’s resignation.
Utah State Sen. Dan Liljenquist also told The Daily Caller he thinks Holder should resign. “My premise is, if [Holder] knew about this program or authorized it and he didn’t tell the truth about it, absolutely, he should resign,” Liljenquist said, according to The DC. Liljenquist added that he would “expect” Hatch to demand Holder’s departure also.
But a Hatch spokesman said the senator wouldn’t call for Holder’s resignation. “Senator Hatch has been appalled by how the Department of Justice conducted its Fast and Furious program and its refusal to take full responsibility,” Hatch’s spokesman told The DC. “Working with his colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he has called for Attorney General Holder to say what he knew and when he knew it and continues to demand more answers.”
And Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) hasn’t called for Holder’s resignation — yet — either, saying he plans to continue pushing Holder for more information, The DC said. But Cornyn said pointedly that he thinks “the Attorney General has taken every opportunity to sidestep and stonewall.”
Several dozen Republican House members have said Holder must go (see Main Justice’s recent report), but there have been no explicit demands for his resignation from the Senate.
A spokeswoman for Grassley, who’s leading the congressional investigation into Fast and Furious with House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), told The Daily Caller he thinks “Holder should resign if there is evidence that he knew the details of Fast and Furious.”
“Beyond that, Senator Grassley would like to see the resignation of the highest ranking official who knew of the details/approved the program,” his spokeswoman added, according to website.
Grassley, the ranking minority member on the judiciary panel, has repeatedly accused the Department of Justice of stonewalling on Fast and Furious (see Main Justice’s recent report).
This article had been corrected to reflect that Lanny Breuer testified he had knowledge of a George W. Bush administration gun-walking operation, not of the more recent use of similar tactics in Fast and Furious.
Asserting that “the Justice Department did not live up to its solemn constitutional responsibilities,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) says she wants an independent investigation of the handling of child sex-abuse charges against the key prosecution witness in the trial of Sen. Ted Stevens, once one of the most powerful figures in Washington.
Lisa Murkowski (Getty)
Murkowski can no longer defer to Attorney General Eric Holder and accept his explanations for why the key witness, wealthy Alaska oil man Bill Allen, was not prosecuted on the sex charges, she declared in a letter to the offices of the DOJ’s acting inspector general and counsel for professional responsibility.
“I would like to believe that Department of Justice personnel followed applicable laws and departmental policies in its handling of the sex abuse allegations against Mr. Allen, just as U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan expected the Justice Department would follow the law in its decisions whether to release potentially exculpatory evidence to Senator Stevens’ defense team,” Murkowski said. “However, we now know that the Justice Department did not live up to its solemn constitutional responsibilities in the Stevens prosecution.”
Murkowski has previously called for a probe into why the DOJ did not prosecute Allen for transporting a minor prostitute across state lines, and why it did not allow the Alaska Department of Law to do so, either, as noted in a report by KTVA television in Anchorage. Her latest call for an inquiry comes as sexual abuse of minors has become a particularly incendiary topic because of allegations involving coaches at Penn State and Syracuse universities.
“Murkowski says she can’t just accept statements by Attorney General Eric Holder that there was no deal allowing Allen to avoid prosecution in exchange for testimony in the public corruption trials of Alaska politicians,” KTVA said.
“We take into consideration, a number of factors, among them being the age of the case, the reliability of the witnesses, the ability to say that we have a better than 50 percent chance of winning a case,” Holder said months ago, as KTVA recalled.
The DOJ’s prosecution of Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in Senate history, ended in a conviction in 2008 on charges that he failed to report gifts from Allen, then the chief of an oil services company. Since the conviction, however, the case has become a long-running nightmare for DOJ.
Early in 2009, Holder took the extraordinary step of having the charges dismissed as allegations emerged that prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence that might have helped the defense. Those allegations have grown in seriousness and intensity, outraging the trial judge, Emmet Sullivan, and leading outside investigators to conclude that prosecutors willfully and intentionally withheld evidence, as Main Justice reported recently.
Stevens lost his Senate seat in 2008 and was killed in a plane crash last year. But the drama in which he was the star character plays on in Alaska, where a number of state lawmakers have been implicated. One was Ben Stevens, former president of the Alaska state senate and a Republican like his father, Ted. He, too, came under scrutiny for benefiting from Allen’s generosity, although he was recently told that he will not be prosecuted (see our report).
Cliff Groh, a former prosecutor who has blogged about the public corruption probe, told KTVA he thinks the outrage over Bill Allen is in part an attempt to rewrite history. “And there does seem to be a sentiment to want to wipe Alaska clean by putting all the blame on Bill Allen — unique pervert, deviate, demon. I just don’t think that works.”
Lately, there have been signs that the Alaska episode, in which Allen’s apparent weakness for underage girls is just one unsavory element, is winding down, as Main Justice reported. The episode has already brought deep professional embarrassment and official rebuke to some prosecutors, including one who took his own life.
And the embarrassment may not be over. Judge Sullivan is sitting on a 500-page report conducted by a special counsel he appointed, only a portion of which has been released, about the botched prosecution. He has said he hopes to release as much of the report as possible early in 2012.
Alabama’s harsh news immigration law doesn’t just create a lofty constitutional clash over the powers of federal and state government, Department of Justice officials said on Monday. Rather, they said, the law appears to be having unfortunate down-to-earth effects in the schools, in the workplace and on how police officers do their jobs.
“The more we hear…the more we are concerned about the impact,” said Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, in charge of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. Perez spoke in Birmingham, where he was joined by Assistant Attorney General Tony West, head of the Civil Division, and U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance of the Northern District of Alabama.
The officials held a briefing for reporters that was also available by conference call to journalists.
The DOJ is challenging the immigration laws of several states (see Main Justice’s recent report), but Alabama’s law is particularly important because some of its provisions are already being enforced, sometimes in contravention of federal law and often with troubling and unintended consequences, the DOJ officials said.
The officials said they are prepared to explore for weeks, or months, if necessary, the impact of the Alabama law. They expressed confidence that the showdown between Washington and Alabama will be settled sooner rather than later, and perhaps even amiably. But if friendly persuasion doesn’t work, the officials said, they have full confidence that the federal government will prevail in the courts.
Part of the Alabama law would require aliens to carry registration cards and schools to verify students’ immigration status (see our recent report), although those portions have been blocked, at least temporarily, but a federal appeals court, as Main Justice reported.
Meanwhile, the officials said Monday they are concerned about the possibility that some Alabama schoolchildren may be kept at home by frightened parents; that some employers may withhold pay from workers who feel they have no recourse because of their status, and that some families may be denied fair housing.
While the underlying issues are of constitutional gravity, they are not merely constitutional, West said. “We’re deeply concerned about the real-world, unintended consequences,” he said.
Vance said the Alabama law’s stated purpose of cracking down on illegal aliens who commit crimes is backfiring, not just by creating confusion over enforcement between federal and state authorities but, indeed, confusion among the 31 counties in her jurisdiction. This situation is especially lamentable, she said, because it promotes “misallocation of limited resources” in a time of government belt-tightening.
The officials reiterated what the federal authorities have been saying about the various state immigration actions: that the separate states are encouraged to help Washington enforce federal immigration laws — indeed, they are encouraged to do so — but they simply cannot enact and enforce their own immigration policies.
There was a certain poignancy to the news briefing when the officials voiced confidence that they will get all the information they need from Alabama school officials. The confidence is based on what was described as decades of “deseg work,” shorthand for federal efforts to move Alabama beyond the tenets of Gov. George C. Wallace, who proudly proclaimed “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” when he was inaugurated in 1963.
Since that time, the officials said, the relationship between Washington and Alabama has evolved into one that is deep and productive. “I’ve never met a school superintendent who didn’t have an unwavering commitment to educating kids,” Perez said.
