Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. was born on January 21, 1951 in the Bronx, New York and was raised
in Elmhurst, Queens. His father (1905-1970) arrived in the US from
Barbados and worked as a real estate broker. Holder’s mother, Miriam, is
American born and the daughter of immigrants from Saint Philip,
Barbados.
“Holder also took a leadership role with the Student Afro-American Society (SAAS), which at one point demanded
that the school’s abandoned ROTC (Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps)
office be renamed the “Malcolm X Lounge” — “in honor of a man who
recognized the importance of territory as a basis for nationhood.” In
1970, Holder was a participant in a five day occupation of that office.
And, according to some accounts, the occupiers were armed. In addition,
Holder and SAAS also occupied the office of Henry Coleman, Dean of
Freshmen, until their demands were met.”
And, it would appear the SAAS was an advocate of the Black Panthers, as in March 1970 the SAAS released a statement supporting the Black Panthers who were charged with plotting to blow up a police station, department stores, railroad tracks, and the New York Botanical Gardens.
Holder
received a bachelor’s degree in American history from Columbia
University in 1973 and went on to earn a J.D. from Columbia Law School.
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Eric Holder was employed by the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section from 1976 to 1988
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He was appointed as a Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in 1988 by President Reagan
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In 1993, President Clinton appointed Holder as US Attorney for the District of Columbia
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In 1997, Clinton nominated Holder to Deputy Attorney General and he was confirmed by the Senate in a unanimous vote
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Holder was appointed US Attorney General by President Obama
One – Discriminatory Hiring Practices
On August 8, 2011 documents were released by the DOJ, subsequent to a court battle, which revealed the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division had been engaging in politicized hiring in the career civil service ranks. According to PJ Media, the politicized hiring practices of Holder’s DOJ are nearly unprecedented in scope.
In June 2008, Holder admitted to the American Constitution Society
(an organization started as a liberal counterweight to the Federalist
Society) that the Justice Department was “going to be looking for people
who share our values.”
Two – Fort Hood
Following
the Fort Hood attack on November 5, 2009 not one of the post-attack
reports issued by the DOJ mentioned Nidal Hasan’s Islamist ideology.
And, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) refused to call the
attack an act of terrorism on its report on the attack. Instead it was
labeled as “workplace violence.” The Gloria Center elaborates:
“This
official “blindness” to Major Hasan’s motivations are unquestionably
the consequences wrought by the Obama administration’s outreach
policies. Not just content with not pursuing terror investigations, as
in the case of Major Hasan and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Obama
administration has taken a more proactive approach to shutting down
terror investigations–especially when those investigations involved
their Muslim outreach partners.”
Three – AP Surveillance
The Justice Department secretly obtained
two months of the telephone records of reporters and editors for The
Associated Press (AP). President and CEO Gary Pruitt has described the
DOJ’s actions as a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news
organizations gather the news.
The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls of individual reporters’ work and
personal phone numbers and AP office numbers in Washington DC, New York City, and
Hartford, Connecticut. Also listed was the main number for the AP in the House of
Representatives’ press gallery, according to the AP’s lawyers.
Pruitt
has commented that, “there can be no possible justification for such an
overboard collection of the telephone communications of The Associated
Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications
with confidential sources across all of the news gathering activities
undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to
AP’s news gathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s
activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right
to know.”
Four – DOJ Secretly Targets Fox News Reporter, James Rosen
In the James Rosen case, the Justice Department claimed it did not violate the press freedom of the Fox News Correspondent
as he isn’t press. Instead, the DOJ argued, he was an “aider and
abettor and/or co-conspirator” in a spy ring, for having receiving
classified information about North Korea from an intelligence analyst.
Evidence
of Rosen’s spying consisted of an e-mail to Rosen’s source stating he
wanted to break “news ahead of my competitors” and that they could
“expose muddle headed policy when we see it—or force the
administration’s hand to go in the right direction, if possible.”
The Department of Justice knew Rosen had not committed a crime by simply asking Stephen Jin-Woo Kim
for his opinion on the expected North Korean response to the
then pending UN condemnations of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic
missile tests. By making the claim, however, to a federal judge, that
Rosen was criminally complicit in the release of classified information,
by the manner in which he posed questions to Kim, the DOJ deluded the
judge into signing a search warrant. The warrant, when executed, allowed
the feds to read Rosen’s private emails. By way of the emails, the feds
were led to Fox News telephone numbers in New York City and in
Washington DC, which they since have admitted to monitoring.
Five – Marc Rich Pardon
Eric Holder played an important role in what was arguably the most infamous of President Clinton’s 176 pardons. Marc Rich, a billionaire financier and fugitive oil broker,
who illegally bought oil from Iran during the American trade embargo,
attempted to hide more than $100 million in profits by using dummy
transactions in off shore corporations. Following that, he renounced his
American citizenship and made a hasty retreat to Switzerland in order
to avoid prosecution for 51 counts of racketeering, wire fraud, tax fraud, tax evasion, and the illegal oil transactions with Iran.
But,
President Clinton signed the pardon, later crediting Holder’s
recommendation as one of the factors that had convinced him to issue the
pardon.
Six – Weather Underground Pardon
Holder, as Deputy Attorney General, “was the gatekeeper for presidential pardons.” Two of the recipients of Holder’s pardons were former Weather Underground members Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans.
The Weather Underground, a far left organization, was founded
in the late 1960′s. It’s main objective was to overthrow the American
government. Several bombing attacks were initiated by the group and were
mostly against government buildings and banks. There were also
exhortations for white radicals to join with black radicals in the
overthrow of the government. The Weather Underground opposed what they
described as “American imperialism.” Former members of the group robbed a
Brinks bank truck in 1981, resulting in the deaths of a Brinks security
guard and two policemen. One of the killers, Kathy Boudin, is now an
adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of Social Work.
Seven – Holder’s DOJ Threatens Free Speech
The American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) of Tennessee sponsored an event on June 4, called “Public Disclosure in a Diverse Society.” The main speakers for the event were DOJ official Bill Killian, who is the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, and FBI Special Agent
of the Knoxville Division, Kenneth Moore. What is troubling about the
event is that Killian addressed how social media posts and documents
deemed inflammatory toward Muslims can be considered a violation of civil rights laws. Killian described the event as, “an educational effort with civil rights laws as they play into freedom of religion
and exercising freedom of religion.” He also said that the event would
serve, “to inform the public what federal laws are in effect and what
the consequences are.”
This
is a blatant attempt at subverting First Amendment rights, but the
DOJ’s Killian is espousing views that apparently have the support ofPresident Obama who has said: ”The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.”
Killian went on to quote
the law, showing a slide of Title 18, U.S. Federal Code, Section 241,
which states: ”If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress,
threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory,
Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment
of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of
the United States…they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not
more than ten years, or both…”
Eight – Hostility Towards Conservatives
At an American Constitution Society gathering in 2004, Holder made the following comments:
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“Conservatives
have been defenders of the status quo, afraid of the future, and
content to allow to continue to exist all but the most blatant
inequalities.”
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Conservatives have “made a mockery of the rule of law.”
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Conservatives
try to “put the environment at risk for the sake of unproven economic
theories, to play to the fears of our citizens, and not to their hopes,
and to return the nation to a time that in fact never existed.”
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Conservatives
are “breathtaking” in their “arrogance,” which manifests itself in such
things as “attacks on abortion rights,” “energy policies that are as
shortsighted as they are ineffective,” and “tax cuts that
disproportionately favor those who are well off and perpetuate many of
the inequities in our nation.”
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The
hallmarks of the “conservative agenda” include “social division,
mindless tax cutting, and a defense posture that does not really make us
safer.”
- “The
nation must be convinced that it is a progressive future that holds the
greatest promise for equality and the continuation of those policies
that serve to support the greatest number of our people. In the short
term this will not be an easy task. With the mainstream media somewhat
cowered by conservative critics, and the conservative media
disseminating the news in anything but a fair and balanced manner, and
you know what I mean there, the means to reach the greatest number of
people is not easily accessible.”
Nine – Opposition to Second Amendent Rights
In 2008, Eric Holder claimed
that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual’s right to
keep and bear arms, but only applied to government militias. Political
commentator and scholar, John Lott, was unable to “find
even one gun control law that Holder has opposed.” Lott remarked that,
“on every gun control regulation [Holder] has discussed, he has been
supportive, including: bans, raising the age that someone can possess a
gun, registration and licensing, one gun a month limit on purchases, and
mandatory waiting periods.”
On top of that, in a 1995 address to the Woman’s National Democratic Club, Holder apprised the crowd of the launch
of a public campaign to “really brainwash people into thinking about
guns in a vastly different way.” “What we need to do,” Holder explained,
“is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young
people, and make it something that’s not cool, that it’s not acceptable,
it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our
attitudes about cigarettes.”
Ten – Treatment of Terrorists as Criminal Defendants Instead of Enemy Combatants
In 2004, Holder filed an amicus brief on behalf of al Qaeda terrorist Jose Padilla, who had been commissioned by Osama bin Laden and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
to carry out a post 9/11, second wave of terrorist attacks in the US.
In the brief, Holder held that President Bush lacked the constitutional
authority to determine the parameters of the battlefield in the war on
terror. Padilla was arrested in the US, upon his return from Pakistan
where he met with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to make plans for the attack on
US interests. In Holder’s opinion, Islamic terrorists had a right to
be treated as criminal defendants
and not enemy combatants. The only exception, according to Holder, is
if the capture of the terrorist occurs on a traditional battlefield.
Upon analysis, former Assistant US Attorney Andrew C. McCarthy reported
that Holder’s Padilla brief was “a comprehensive attack on Bush
counterterrorism, an enthusiastic endorsement of the law-enforcement
approach in vogue during the Clinton era (when Holder was deputy
attorney general under Janet Reno, who also signed on to the Padilla
brief).”
Similarly, according to Discover the Networks:
“In May 2009, Holder announced
that Ahmed Ghailani—who had been indicted by a federal grand jury for
the 1998 bombings (which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans) of
two U.S. embassies in Africa—would be transferred from the Guantanamo
Bay detention center to New York City for trial. This would make
Ghailani the first Guantanamo detainee brought to the US and the first
to face trial in a civilian criminal court. Said Holder:
‘By
prosecuting Ahmed Ghailani in federal court, we will ensure that he
finally answers for his alleged role in the bombing of our embassies in
Tanzania and Kenya….This administration is committed to keeping the
American people safe and upholding the rule of law, and by closing
Guantanamo and bringing terrorists housed there to justice we will make
our nation stronger and safer.’
On
November 13, 2009, Holder announced that his Justice Department would
likewise try five Guantanamo Bay detainees with alleged ties to the 9/11
conspiracy, in a civilian court—the
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The
defendants were Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz
Ali, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM).”
Eleven – Arizona Immigration Law
On
April 23, 2010, Arizona’s GOP governor, Jan Brewer, signed into law a
bill authorizing state police to check with federal authorities on the
immigration status of any individuals they stop for a legitimate
reason, if the behavior of those individuals, or the circumstances of the
stop, cause the officers to suspect they might be in the US
illegally. But, following the bill being signed into law, Holder
vehemently spoke out against the bill and suggested the federal
government might challenge it. He also warned that the law could lead to
racial profiling and might cause Latinos to stop cooperating with
police.
After accusing Arizona of trying to “second guess” the federal government and the Justice Department
he filed a lawsuit, challenging the state’s immigration policy. This
was done on the grounds that the “invalid” law interferes with federal
immigration responsibilities and “must be struck down.” The lawsuit
urged the U.S. District Court in Arizona to “preliminarily and
permanently” prohibit the state from enforcing the law, but later on
down the road, the law was overturned by the Supreme Court.
Twelve – New Black Panther Intimidation
On Election Day, 2008, a couple of members of the New Black Panther Party intimidated
white voters with racial slurs and threats. This took place at a
Philadelphia polling place and the two culprits were Jerry Jackson and
King Samir Shabazz. Former civil rights attorney and campaign aide to
the late Robert F. Kennedy, Bartle Bull, observed the Panthers’ antics
and described
them as “the most blatant form of voter intimidation” he had ever seen.
Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits intimidation,
coercion and threats to voters or those aiding voters, so the Bush
Justice Department filed a civil-rights lawsuit against Jackson and Shabazz and against the New Black Panther Party and its national chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz.
However, in 2009 the Obama administration inherited that lawsuit and
when the defendants failed to answer the lawsuit, a federal court in
Philadelphia entered a default judgment against them. The Holder Justice
Department responded
by abruptly dropping the charges against the Panthers and two of the
defendants. The third defendant was simply barred from displaying a
weapon near a Philadelphia polling place for the next three years.
Thirteen – Opposition to Voter ID Laws
Eric Holder has consistently opposed
efforts to pass voter ID laws, which are designed to minimize voter
fraud. He believes these laws have the effect of disenfranchising
nonwhite minorities. In a May 2012 meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus and black church leaders, Holder said
that during the preceding two years, the Justice Department had
challenged “two dozen state laws and executive orders from more than a
dozen states that could make it significantly harder for many eligible
voters to cast ballots in 2012.″
Fourteen – Fast & Furious
The Heritage Foundation provides a summary of the Fast and Furious scandal:
“A
US government gun trafficking investigation gone horribly wrong has
resulted in the death of a U.S. Border Patrol officer, some 2,000
firearms in the hands of criminals, and the dismissal of a 24 year
veteran law enforcement official. This is the story of Fast and Furious,
and yesterday the latest chapter unfolded when two top officials
associated with the operation were removed from their positions, while a
third individual resigned.
The
story begins in the fall of 2009, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives (ATF) office in Phoenix, Arizona, began selling
weapons to small-time gun buyers in the hopes of tracing them to major
weapons traffickers along the southwestern border and into Mexico. Their
efforts failed, the number of arms unaccounted for numbers around 1,500
as of late July, and about two-thirds of those guns ended up in Mexico, according to congressional testimony.
Tragically, the botched operation has had serious consequences. On the night of December 15, 2010, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry
was shot and killed during an effort to catch several bandits targeting
illegal immigrants in Arizona near the border. When law enforcement
rushed to the scene, they discovered two of the killers’ assault rifles
that were among those sold as part of Operation Fast and Furious.
Additionally, 57 Fast and Furious weapons have been connected to at least an additional11 violent crimes in the U.S.”
Fifteen – Holder Purges References to “Radical Islam”
In February 2012, Islamist groups
in the United States were found to have repeatedly met with
high-ranking Obama administration officials in order to voice their
concerns regarding the use of the term “radical Islam” in FBI training
materials. Because these groups felt the term was both “offensive” and
“racist,” Holder, along with FBI director Robert Mueller, issued an
order requiring all such language to be removed from the FBI training
content. The Gloria Center reports that, “among the more than 1,000 items
destroyed or removed by the FBI and the DOJ were PowerPoints and
articles that defined jihad as ‘holy war,’ and presentations that
portrayed the Muslim Brotherhood
as an organization which seeks to establish Islam’s dominion over all
the world — a goal the Brotherhood has candidly and publicly declared
for decades.”
Sixteen – Islamist Outreach
Much of the recent Muslim outreach
policy was developed at a June 2011 workshop at Georgetown University.
The workshop was sponsored by the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for
Christian-Muslim Understanding. In attendance were leaders from the
Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and other
Islamic organizations. These groups, all of which are considered to be
radical, met with senior Obama administration officials. Additionally, a
workshop was held which included officials from the Department of
Justice. The workshop was entitled “Workshop on Police-Community
Engagement and Counter-Terrorism.” The Obama administration has a
history of radical Muslim outreach.
These outreach efforts have been employed by the highest levels of Eric
Holder’s Department of Justice, resulting in decisions which
significantly impact the potential prosecutions of terrorists and Islamist leaders.
