The calls have begun for Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s resignation. Potential Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty both took that position last weekend in response to last week’s embarrassing result in the trial of Guantanamo terrorist detainee Ahmed Khalfan Ghailiani. Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Pawlenty won’t be the only prominent politicos reaching the conclusion that Mr. Holder is unfit for the office he holds.
With Republicans getting oversight authority through their new House majority, the attorney general’s conduct in numerous controversies will attract increasingly fierce criticism, especially on Capitol Hill. Deservedly so. Under Mr. Holder’s stewardship, the Justice Department has been not just politicized, but radicalized. On issue after issue, it has tried to redefine the law on its own, without clear legislative authority and sometimes in clear defiance of legislative intent.
Consider the case of Ghailiani. Congress passed, and President George W. Bush signed, a law providing for military commissions to try enemy combatants. Experts warned that trying these terrorist suspects in normal courts would be fraught with problems. Mr. Holder defiantly insisted on using ordinary courts anyway and specifically said the Ghailiani trial would be the test case to prove him right. Instead, Federal District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled key evidence inadmissible, and the jury acquitted Ghailiani on 284 of 285 counts. This terrorist was involved in bombing two American embassies and almost escaped scot-free.
Nope, I want this guy impeached and on trial in the Senate!
Prosecute & remove this idiot from Cabinet, for sheer failure to uphold his sworn oath, if nothing else.
And do it as soon as possible, for the good of the country.
Gates should resign as well. And while you’re at it - Impeach Obama for failure to keep our nation secure.
“Embarrassing result?”
Embarrassing to whom? More than likely, it accomplished what Holder intended: Lucrative gigs for lawyer friends, and a message to muslims that they had little to fear from US “justice.”
If anything embarrassed Holder, it must have been that the guy got convicted, instead of the hoped-for walk. Now he has to spin that to his friends and supporters in NY law circles and in Al-qaeda.