From protecting voting rights to challenging discrimination, @EricHolder was one of our finest Attorneys General. Honored by his support. -H
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 13, 2016Hillary must be forgetting about the fact Eric Holder was the first sitting Attorney General in history to be held in criminal and civil contempt of Congress by Democrats and Republicans. Actually, considering her own legal troubles she probably just doesn't care. After all Holder, like Clinton post State Department, excelled in scandal cover-up during his tenure at the Department of Justice.
After 18 months of investigation and non-responses to Congressional subpoenas about Operation Fast and Furious, the House of Representatives has voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal contempt. The vote was bipartisan with 17 Democrats voting with Republicans. The final vote tally was 255 yeas, 67 nays and 110 members didn't vote. Many members of the Congressional Black Caucus and Democrats walked out of the vote in protest. Holder is the first sitting attorney general to be held in contempt and the first sitting cabinet member to be held in contempt. The criminal contempt charge will now move to the U.S. Attorney in Washington D.C. for review.
Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa offered to delay or cancel the contempt vote today, so long as Attorney General Eric Holder delivered 1300 documents as part of compliance with a 22 part October 2011 subpoena regarding Operation Fast and Furious. After a series of last minute meetings and efforts to prevent the vote, Holder failed to deliver those documents and the House proceeded as planned.
But the relationship between Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder isn't a simple matter of praise or 2016 endorsement. Instead, it goes back decades to the violent Puerto Rican terrorist group FALN. FALN was pardoned by President Bill Clinton shortly before he left office and Holder, who Clinton appointed to U.S. Attorney in Washington D.C. during the 90s, approved the pardon. Holder was also involved in the pardoning of Marc Rich.
By 1996, the FBI had linked FALN to 146 bombings and a string of armed robberies -- a reign of terror that resulted in nine deaths and hundreds of injured victims.
On Aug. 7, 1999, the one-year anniversary of the U.S. African embassy bombings that killed 257 people and injured 5,000, President Bill Clinton reaffirmed his commitment to the victims of terrorism, vowing that he "will not rest until justice is done." Four days later, while Congress was on summer recess, the White House quietly issued a press release announcing that the president was granting clemency to 16 imprisoned members of FALN. What began as a simple paragraph on the AP wire exploded into a major controversy.
Keep in mind if Hillary wins the White House, she'll have up to three Supreme Court appointments to make. Eric Holder is likely to be one of them.
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