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.
