26, September 2014 Eric
Holder’s Legacy
Eric Holder deserves credit for aggressively
pursuing civil rights cases and using his high office in advancing race
relations. On the flip side his record on prosecuting financial fraud has been
an abysmal failure. None of the executives have been
held accountable for the Wall Street crash which led to the worst recession in
70 years. The DOJ found large firms which engaged in money laundering on behalf of narcotraffickers in countries hostile to the
US but decided not to prosecute them because they were
too big to fail or too big to jail. This sent a comforting message to
these financial institutions that they were beyond reach of the law and thus
encouraged to continue their illegal, profitable practices.
The DOJ decided to give a virtual free pass to most of
these offenders and used deferred and non-prosecution procedures which amounted
to small fines and no prosecutions. An unprecedented
war on Journalists and whistleblowers has been pursued using the odious 1917
Espionage Act which was used to repress dissent during wartime. Finally,
Holder’s DOJ sanctioned drone attacks resulting in the death of scores of
innocent civilians and provided the legal cover for raw executive power. New
York Times's James Risen, who the Obama administration wants to prosecute,
told Maureen Dowd that President Obama is "the
greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation”.
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