Eric Holder, Obama’s nominee for Attorney General, played a key role in the inexcusable pardon of Marc Rich in the last days of the Clinton presidency. Universal condemnation of that pardon caused Holder to take the position that he just didn’t know enough about who Rich was. A case of ignorance. Oops, sorry.
That was Holder’s story then, and it was his story in confirmation hearings last week.
Andrew McCarthy adds some well-documented facts that everyone seems to be ignoring:
To be clear, years before the pardon scandal convinced him it was in his interest to make like he barely knew Rich’s name, Holder had bragged to the media about how his office was cracking down on Rich, an international fugitive who had duped the government out of loads of cash. Contrary to his congressional testimony that he’d never heard of Rich before 1999, Holder had unquestionably been aware of Rich’s name and history four years earlier; in fact, it was solely because of Rich that Holder extracted a $1.2 million settlement in a federal civil action.
In “Unpardonable: Holder’s Marc Rich Shuffle,” McCarthy uses Holder’s own court filings and public statements to refute his protestations of ignorance. Holder knew exactly who Rich was. The only question is why Holder engineered a pardon so astonishingly at odds with the interests of the United States and so embarrassing to the outgoing president. (Well, okay, I guess you can’t embarrass Clinton, but it did cast a cloud over his last days as president.)
Oh, and there’s also the question of whether Holder’s prior testimony needs to be revised.
