-By John Armor
I watched as much as I could tolerate of the confirmation hearing for Eric Holder to be Attorney General in the Obama Administration. He claimed that his participation in the last minute pardon of Marc Rich was “a mistake” and that he had “learned from it, and would be a better Attorney General because of it.”
The nature of his mistake was that he “did not know” the details of Marc Rich’s crimes and situation.
Let’s examine those claims.
The Department of Justice has a Pardons Attorney who is assigned the duty of examining each request for a pardon. That person is supposed to prepare a report stating the pros and cons of pardoning each particular person. That report is supposed to go to the President before he acts. Included in that report should be the conclusions and recommendations of the lead prosecutors on the case.
That was not done with Marc Rich. Eric Holder short-circuited the process. He deliberately kept the Pardon Attorney out of the loop. He did not inform the lead prosecutor that a pardon for Marc Rich was underway.
Unless Eric Holder was breathtakingly incompetent, he had to know what the charges were against Rich. It was not just tax evasion in the millions of dollars. It was also trading with the enemy. Rich broke the embargo that the US had officially established on oil being sold by Saddam Hussein in Iraq. And lastly, Rich had fled the US to avoid prosecution. He was a fugitive from justice,
It is normal practice for a pardon to state what the person is being pardoned for, So, the nominee for Attorney General HAD to know this much, which is more than he admitted in his sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week.
Shift gears to the President that then-Assistant Attorney General Holder was then reporting to. President Clinton had received a half million dollar contribution to his Presidential Library Foundation from his “friend” Denise Rich who just happened to be Marc Rich’s wife.
Why would Eric Holder have kept this pardon out of the normal process and in his hands only? The most logical reason is that he was instructed by his boss, President Clinton, that Clinton wanted to grant this pardon, and Holder’s job was to grease the skids to get that result.
Was this an isolated case? No.
The pardon of the FALN (Puerto Rican) terrorists who conducted a series of sometimes fatal bombings was similar, and equally shepherded through the process by Eric Holder. The terrorists had not even asked for pardons. Holder claimed that they had “repented” and been “rehabilitated.” Some of them signed documents claiming that but they repudiated those documents as soon as they were released. Some did not sign, but still were pardoned and released. The relatives of those killed by the bombs were not consulted.
What was the Clinton interest in those pardons? Bill Clinton’s wife Hillary was then preparing to run for the Senate in New York, which has a large Puerto Rican community. So the Rich pardon was done for cash money. The FALN pardon was done for power. In practical politics where ethics do not matter, money and power are interchangeable.
Now, let’s take a dip in history. Three prior Presidential Administrations were rife with corruption. In two of these three the Attorneys General went to jail for their own involvement in the corruption. Those occurred under Presidents Harding, Nixon, and Clinton. Any administration which intends to skate close to, or beyond the edge of the law, will be aided by having a pliant Attorney General who will do whatever the President wants, for better or worse.
Not only should Eric Holder not be confirmed as Attorney General, the very nomination of such a defective candidate reflects badly on Barack Obama himself. And yet, best information is that Holder will be confirmed. That will reflect badly on the Senators who vote in favor of confirmation.
As Bette Davis said in All About Eve, “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” Given the beginning of this Administration, including the nomination of a man to oversee the IRS, who didn’t pay his taxes, we may be in for four full years of anything goes.
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John Armor is a graduate of Yale, and Maryland Law School, and has 33 years practice at law in the US Supreme Court. Mr. Armor has authored seven books and over 750 articles. Armor happily lives on a mountaintop in the Blue Ridge. He can be reached at: John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
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