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November 25, 2023

In 2013, when asked when he might step down as attorney general, Eric Holder said: “I’m still enjoying what I’m doing, there’s still work to be done. I’m still the President’s wingman, so I’m there with my boy. So we’ll see.”

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What could he have meant? It didn’t take long after President Obama took office to find out. Holder stayed in to commit more legal mischief. And that established the roots of the legal shambles we see today, with Attorney General Merrick Garland violating President Trump’s — and our — civil rights.

The pattern of lawlessness started with Holder.

In May 2009, the DOJ dropped prosecution of several New Black Panther members for violating the Voting Rights Act on election day in 2008. When testifying before Congress to explain this decision, Holder claimed his hands were clean and that the decision was made by career Justice Department prosecutors. But that wasn’t true. According to J. Christian Adams, a real career DOJ attorney, the decision not to prosecute was made by Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, an Obama political appointee, “who overruled a unanimous recommendation for prosecution by Adams and his associates.”

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Backed by a videotape of the New Black Panthers intimidating voters, there couldn’t have been a more clear cut case of a Voting Rights Act violation. So why drop the case? An attorney familiar with the Obama Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division observed that Department staff “openly and proudly advocate for a different standard” depending on the race of the alleged civil rights violator.

Another Obama priority was gun control. To that end, the Fast and Furious scheme was hatched in October 2009 by the ATF, a Justice Department agency. The ATF, however, somehow lost track of almost 2,000 Fast and Furious gun sales, one of which was linked to the murder of Brian Terry, a Border Patrol Agent. Fast and Furious turned out to be an embarrassment for Obama and of questionable legality. So Holder led an effort to stymy investigation of the scheme by ignoring Congressional subpoenas for emails and other documents, which ultimately earned him a contempt of Congress citation. Holder then advanced the cover-up by claiming executive privilege as the reason for withholding additional documents. It was only years later, when documents were produced by court order, that the true purpose of Fast and Furious was revealed: to gin up a crisis requiring a crackdown on guns in America.

Then there came a time when the press was making life difficult for Obama. And Holder was determined not to let the First Amendment get in the way. So, in 2009 the DOJ ignored Fox News reporter James Rosen’s constitutional rights when it suspected him of being the source of classified leaks about North Korea. The New York Times editorial board wrote: “With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible ‘co-conspirator’ in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.”

Similarly, in May 2012 the DOJ secretly obtained phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors after the AP published a story about a foiled terror plot: “Obtaining a broad range of telephone records in order to ferret out a government leaker is an unacceptable abuse of power,” said Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. “Freedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy, and that freedom often depends on confidential communications between reporters and their sources.”

Holder proved to be an accomplished wingman, and it remained to be seen if Merrick Garland would follow suit. On his first day on the job, Garland offered a ray of hope when he said: “All of us are united by our commitment to the rule of law, and to seek an equal justice under law.”

But Garland’s pledge didn’t last long. On Sept. 29, 2021, the National Schools Board Association sent a letter to President Biden warning of threats of violence made by parents to school officials. Within days the White House passed the letter to the DOJ, whereupon Garland galvanized into action and released a memo directing the FBI to address threats made by parents to school boards. All this fit neatly in Biden’s worldview that the greatest threat the country faced was from white MAGA supremacists. But upon reflection, and in response to the outrage voiced by parents, the National Schools Board Association disavowed its letter. Garland, however, stubbornly refused to retract his memo.