WASHINGTON -- U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the 82nd attorney general and the first black person to serve in that position, is resigning from his post, the Justice Department said Thursday.
RELATED ARTICLE
http://www.arkansas…">Pryor doesn't want Holder's job, staff says
Holder, who was a prime target for Republican critics of President Barack Obama's administration, said he will be leaving the job with "mixed emotions." He will stay on until a successor is named and is confirmed by the Senate.
"This is a place that I love, and I think we have accomplished a great deal," he said before the White House ceremony where he announced his resignation. "There is a part of me that is always going to be here at the Justice Department. But it's time for me to move on."
Obama, at the ceremony, said the moment was "bittersweet." He said Holder served under six presidents of both parties and lauded his work prosecuting terrorists, enforcing civil-rights laws and expanding voting rights.
"He believes, as I do, that justice is not just an abstract theory," Obama said. "It's a living and breathing principle."
Holder, 63, is one of three original members of Obama's Cabinet still serving in the administration and is the fourth-longest-serving attorney general in U.S. history. Holder has been discussing plans to leave the job for more than a year as he tried to complete his agenda on federal sentencing and civil rights.
Particularly in Obama's second term, Holder has been the most prominent liberal voice of the administration, leading its push for same-sex marriage and voting rights. And after the recent shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer, Holder volunteered to go to Ferguson, Mo., as the administration's emissary.
At the White House ceremony, Obama called Holder "the people's lawyer" and credited him with driving down the nation's crime rate and the incarceration rate -- the first time they have declined together in more than 40 years.
"Through it all, he's shown a deep and abiding fidelity to one of our most cherished ideals as a people, and that is equal justice under the law," Obama said.
The Justice Department said Holder finalized his plans to leave in an hour-long conversation with Obama at the White House during Labor Day weekend.
Holder is a former federal prosecutor and Superior Court judge in Washington who served as the deputy attorney general under Janet Reno.
A child of the civil-rights era, Holder was shaped by images of violence in Selma, Ala. He joined sit-ins at Columbia University, where protesters renamed an office after Malcolm X. He has frequently spoken in personal terms about civil rights, including about his experiences as a prosecutor in Washington and as a college student, when he was stopped by the police.
As attorney general, he has pushed to change what he sees as fundamental inequities in the criminal-justice system, joining liberal Democrats and libertarian-minded Republicans to advocate for the most sweeping liberalization of sentencing laws since the beginning of the war on drugs. He told prosecutors not to seek long sentences for low-level crime, and he pushed to eliminate long mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug crimes.
This week, Holder announced that the federal prison population declined this year for the first time since 1980. He projected the decline would continue for the next two years.
His record on civil liberties has earned him fewer accolades. He authorized subpoenas directed at journalists and approved the CIA's killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen working with the al-Qaida branch in Yemen. Holder also signed off on the National Security Agency's authority to sweep up the phone records of millions of Americans not charged with any crime.
Inside the Justice Department, many career prosecutors see Holder's push to prosecute terrorism suspects in criminal courts as his most enduring legacy. While the military tribunals at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have languished, the Justice Department has won several high-profile convictions and lengthy sentences in terrorism trials in the U.S.
Through it all, Holder built one of the closest personal relationships with Obama of any members of the president's Cabinet. Holder and his wife regularly spent their summer vacations on Martha's Vineyard at the same time the Obamas did, with the two couples sharing dinner and spending time together on the island.
Holder also attracted partisan venom in Congress that might otherwise have been aimed more squarely at the president.
He was attacked by critics in the wake of a botched gun program along the border with Mexico. Republican lawmakers in the House held Holder in contempt of Congress in a 2012 dispute about turning over documents related to the program, called "Fast and Furious."
Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican who led a committee investigation of the gun operation, called Holder "the most divisive U.S. attorney general in modern history."
"Attorney General Holder's legacy has eroded more confidence in our legal system than any attorney general before him," Issa said in a statement Thursday. "Eric Holder administered justice as the political activist he describes himself as instead of an unbiased law enforcement official."
possible successors
With Holder's imminent departure, Obama must now find a successor who can follow through on Holder's initiatives for the remainder of the president's second term.
Holder's successor will play a central role shaping the legal policies behind the fight against Islamic extremists that Obama is waging in Iraq and Syria. The new attorney general also will have a big hand in helping enact new executive orders that Obama has announced, including a change in immigration policy that is expected after the midterm elections.
Holder has said he intends to leave by the end of the year, which would put Senate confirmation proceedings for Obama's nominee after the November congressional elections and before the next Congress is seated.
That means Democrats still would hold their majority in the chamber when the nomination comes up for a vote, though Republicans would still be able to put hurdles in front of Obama's choice.
Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the chamber, opposed Holder's confirmation in 2009 and said he remains confident that was the right decision. The attorney general, he said, "placed ideological commitments over a commitment to the rule of law."
"So I will be scrutinizing the president's replacement nominee to ensure the Justice Department finally returns to prioritizing law enforcement over partisan concerns," McConnell said.
Some Democrats on Thursday urged the president not to rush the process of finding Holder's successor, even if it means dealing with a new Senate.
"What I think the president ought to do is make this the first test of whether the new Republicans are going to continue to obstruct," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned that it would be "irresponsible for anyone to try to delay confirmation of the country's chief law enforcement officer for political purposes."
Holder said Thursday that the president needed to move quickly "given the national security responsibility the attorney general has, the domestic responsibility the attorney has."
White House spokesman Josh Earnest refused to put any timetable on when Obama would make a decision. He said he was confident that whomever Obama picks would get bipartisan support.
Many possible successors have been talked about by lawmakers and administration officials, but at least two potential candidates have suggested they won't seek the job.
Deval Patrick, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, said at an event Thursday in Massachusetts that being the top federal prosecutor is "an enormously important job, but it's not one for me right now," according to his press office.
Jim Margolin, a spokesman for Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, declined to comment on Bharara's plans for the future or whether he is interested in Holder's job. In the past, Bharara's response to questions about higher office consistently has been, "I love my job."
FBI Director James Comey, a former deputy attorney general, said Thursday that he didn't want the job.
Information for this article was contributed by Matt Apuzzo and Michael D. Shear of The New York Times; by Del Quentin Wilber, Derek Wallbank, Angela Greiling Keane, Tom Schoenberg and Margaret Talev of Bloomberg News; and by Nedra Pickler, Eric Tucker, Pete Yost, Jesse Holland and Steve LeBlanc of The Associated Press.
A Section on 09/26/2014
27076139
