ERIC HOLDER'S CAREER: Scandals, activism and race politics
Eric Holder is the fourth-longest-serving attorney general in U.S. history and has attracted more than his share of scandal.
1995 – Holder told the Woman's National Democratic Club that the DOJ would soon launch a public campaign to 'really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way ... in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes.'
January 2001 – As deputy attorney general, Holder interceded with President Clinton and advised him to pardon Marc Rich, a substantial campaign donor and 20-year fugitive, in a tax-evasion and racketeering case. Clinton granted the pardon during his final hours in office.
Eric Holder also pushed and got from Clinton a controversial presidential pardon for 16 members of violent Puerto Rican nationalist organizations. Holder, as deputy attorney general, pressed subordinates to drop objections to clemency for a group of terrorists convicted of numerous heinous crimes. Overall, they had been linked by the FBI to more than 130 bombings, several armed robberies, six slayings and hundreds of injuries.
February 2009 – Holder was confirmed as attorney general by a 75-21 margin in the U.S Senate and became America's first black attorney general.
February 2009 – A newly minted AG Holder said during a speech marking Black History Month that the U.S. was 'essentially a nation of cowards' on race-relations. He said in January 2014 that 'I would not take that back.
May 2009 – Holder stunned legal watchers by decided to try a terror-bombing suspect in civilian courts instead of giving him a military tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay detention complex. Ahmed Ghailani, indicted for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies which killed 12 Americans and 212 others, became the first Guantanamo prisoner brought to U.S. soil for a trial.
November 2009 – Following an Islamist Army doctor's jihad-related mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas, Holder's DOJ classified the casualties as the result of 'workplace violence' instead of opening a terrorism case.
April 2010 – Holder personally OK'ed search warrants demanding the secret collection of emails belonging to Fox News Channel reporter James Rosen. The DOJ wanted to track the source of a national security leak without Rosen being aware he was being surveilled.
May 2011 – Holder testified under oath during a congressional hearing that he hadn't heard about the failed 'gunwalking' program Operation Fast and Furious until one month earlier. A memo later surfaced from 2010 showing that Holder had been briefed on the program, which lost track of nearly 2,000 guns that killed hundreds including an American border patrol agent.
June 2012 – Congress voted to hold Holder in contempt, an unprecedented move, for refusing to turn over the Fast and Furious documents that a Republican-led committee had subpoenaed.
November 2013 – a Texas Republican congressman filed Articles of Impeachment against Holder but only attracted 26 cosponsors for the bill.
March 2014 – Holder declined Republicans' demands to appoint an independent Special Prosecutor to probe allegations that IRS officials politically targeted conservative groups with intrusive investigations. Instead he endorsed the work of a DOJ lawyer who was an Obama campaign donor.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2769620/US-Attorney-General-Eric-Holder-resign.html#ixzz3EMoJFnqp