Holder Bashing Redux (Beverley Lumpkin Twists Herself Into Pretzel To Defend Her Buddy, Eric Holder)

After several days of slow leaking, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., March 14 released his report on the Government Reform Committee's investigation of the Clinton pardon scandal.

The only portions I've chosen to wallow in are those dealing with the international fugitives Marc Rich and Pincus Green pardons; I'll leave Roger Clinton and the Rodham brothers to others. Regarding the Rich/Green pardons, I was mainly curious how the report would deal with Justice alumnus and former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder.

It is not kind. I will reveal here a bias: from my extensive reporting at the time (and the pieces are still available in the archives online) I concluded that Holder had been careless, even negligent, and probably lazy — but not corrupt. Burton strongly disagrees.

The Republican report concludes that Rich representative Jack Quinn and Holder were in cahoots together to make sure nobody else at Justice, especially the prosecutors in New York, knew about the pardon petition. Burton says, "Holder advised Quinn to file the Rich pardon petition with the White House and leave the Justice Department out of the process." Holder denies any such advice.

Burton also finds that "Holder's support of the Rich pardon played a critical role in the success of the pardon effort." Although Holder's people deny that he "supported" the pardon, it is doubtless true that the fact the number two guy in the Justice Department was saying he was "neutral leaning favorable" probably did carry a lot of weight at the White House in those last chaotic hours.

In seeking a motive for Holder's otherwise inexplicable (alleged) actions, Burton lights on the belief that "Holder was seeking Jack Quinn's support to be appointed as attorney general in a potential Gore administration, and this may have affected Holder's judgment in the Rich matter."

The problem with this supposition is the calendar; virtually every action or conversation that Holder had about the Rich pardon came after the election had been decided and Holder knew he would not be appointed attorney general under Bush. (Actually, he did end up serving a bit of time as acting attorney general in the early days, but that's another story.)

In order to make the idea of Holder's having had a political motivation work, the committee has dug up two pieces of evidence or testimony that seem rather dubious.

The committee asserts that Holder originally recommended Quinn's hiring to Rich, through one of his lobbyists, Gershon Kekst. But Holder's associates say the reality was quite different. He was seated at a dinner next to Kekst, a stranger, who began asking Holder what he did. As one Holder source noted, "this guy knew nothing about the justice system," and started asking Holder, if you have a problem, how does the appeal system work?

Even the committee agrees that Holder was not aware Kekst worked for Rich. Holder explained generally to his dinner companion that one hires somebody who knows the system; that such an advocate would go to the U.S. Attorney, then Justice's criminal division, and on rare occasions to the deputy attorney or the attorney general. But, he advised, you gotta hire somebody who knows how to do things.

Kekst asked, pointing at another guest, like Jack Quinn? And Holder replied, sure, Jack Quinn is a good example of somebody who knows how the system works. But Holder strenuously denies that he "recommended" Quinn to Kekst, or that he said such a lawyer could come directly to him as deputy attorney general to work things out. As one person pointed out: why would Holder tell a total stranger, you can avoid all the usual processes and come directly to me?

The other suspicious piece of evidence adduced by Burton is a supposed 11/18/00 e-mail from Quinn to other Rich representatives asserting he had talked to "eric" who had advised that he go straight to "wh" and avoid Justice with the pardon petition.

According to Holder's people, though, this e-mail was not initially produced to the committee and was "discovered" some time later. The others working with Quinn could not recall the message. And even Quinn now says he doesn't recall the supposed conversation.

Holder does recall a meeting with Quinn on another subject on Nov. 21, but does not remember Quinn taking him aside and telling him that a pardon petition would be sent directly to the White House. Holder sources say if he had been told that, he would have just shrugged it off in the belief that any such petition sent to the White House would immediately be forwarded to Justice anyway, and sooner or later would be brought to his attention.

Holder certainly does not deny that he strongly wished to be attorney general, and for some time it appeared that Quinn was supportive of him. Holder's friends believe that Quinn played on that desire to lessen any suspicions Holder may have had about Quinn's advances.

By Jan. 19, of course, when the final fateful decisions were made on the pardons, Holder was virtually oblivious; he testified he was completely focused on security matters. He strongly regrets not having raised red flags when he finally focused on the Rich pardon petition.

His rather lame excuse is his understanding that then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak requested it, and if it were important for foreign policy reasons, then he — in that lamentable phrase — would be neutral leaning favorable.

But obviously by Jan. 19 Holder could not have still been contemplating becoming attorney general. Burton's accusation of corrupt intent only works if you swallow Kekst's story and the supposed Quinn e-mail.

But here's another reason put forward by some as proof that Holder was not spending the entire year 2000 planning and scheming in an all-consuming desire to become attorney general.

He felt "it was just time." He had become deputy with the assurance and belief that Attorney General Janet Reno would leave before the end of the administration, allowing him to step up. Nobody counted on how stubborn she could be. By March/April 2000 Holder was tired, there were strains on his family, and he became convinced Reno would never go.

According to sources close to Holder, he went to the White House, met with Chief of Staff John Podesta, and said he was leaving. Podesta praised his service but accepted the resignation. There was just one little problem: nobody had told Gore's people. When they found out, according to one Holder intimate, they went ballistic.

They were furious Podesta had not contacted them but upset that Holder's departure would look like a vote of no confidence in Gore's prospects for election. They thought it would look terrible if senior officials started leaving the administration. So Holder mulled it over and after about a week decided out of loyalty to stay.

Obviously it was a fateful decision. Holder's friends feel that Quinn and Clinton ensnared him, using his easy-going nature against him. The fact is, after the pardon fiasco, it's impossible to imagine that Eric Holder could ever become attorney general.

A cursory search for Holder reveals:

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More to the point, given Lumpkin's political leanings (she had been co-opted by the administration), she still cannot admit even to herself that she failed to dig deeply into the activity of a criminally-minded pack of scoundrels who would use every last second in office to their advantage.

Poor Beverly has been cut adrift ever since Clinton and his corrupt AG, Janet Reno, left the DOJ. She no longer has DOJ insiders such as Eric Holder and Marie Hagen feeding her tidbits which Ms Lumpkin used to unchallengly recite like a sock puppet. Now that she now longer has her insider sources, Beverley has been desperately casting about for story angles. One of them, early on in the Bush Administration was about how John Ashcroft was perhaps unqualified to be AG because he neither drank or danced. Then she went on to castigate Ashcroft because he (GASP! SHOCK!) prayed in PRIVATE!!!

The latter report caused me to castigate in turn Ms Lumpkin here on the FR. Ms Lumpkin knows me well because of my numerous Lumpkin reports. (She is also secretly in love with YOURS TRULY.) After this latter critique on my part, Ms Lumpkin made amends to get in my good graces again. However, when she was actually trying to keep from being overly biased she ended up as merely boring. For months her "Halls Of Justice" reports were dull and dry as sawdust (although they improved slightly following 9-11). When I took her to task for her stale writing style, I suggested she make her reports more interesting.

Well, Ms Lumpkin took my advice right away. In her next "Halls Of Justice" report she wrote an amusing story about how Ashcoft had a nekkid DOJ statue covered up. At least that was her implication in the story until the very end when she basically contradicted herself and said it wasn't true. Unfortunately, many news outlets caught the first part of Lumpkin's report and made it seem that an overly prudish Ashcroft ordered the statue cover-up. The National Review finally exposed this report as untrue.

Hey, Beverley! If you want to impress your PJ, you'll have to do it with writing that is both interesting AND correct. If you are able to accomplish this task, you will make PJ very happy. But don't be a bad girl and come up with lame twisting excuses for sleazes such as Eric Holder such as you have done in this report.

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