In a Washington Post op-ed, former Attorney General Eric Holder stated that he believes William Barr is unfit to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer.
What We Know:
- Holder served in the Obama Administration between 2009 and 2015. He attacked Barr for “a series of public statements and … actions that are so plainly ideological, so nakedly partisan and so deeply inappropriate”. For example, he cited comments Barr made this week where he said the FBI may have acted partisan in their opening of the investigation into the Russian probe, according to CNN.
- Holder also complained that Barr was being partisan in his views and that he had a loyalty to Trump. He went on to say: “To me, his attempts to vilify the President’s critics sounded more like the tactics of an unscrupulous criminal defense lawyer than a U.S. attorney general”. Holder also added that in his comments, Barr “exposed himself as a partisan actor, not an impartial law enforcement official”.
- In 2013, Barr did refer to himself as President’s Obama wingman. “I’m still enjoying what I’m doing, there’s still work to be done. I’m still the President’s wing-man, so I’m there with my boy. So we’ll see.”
- Holder also went after Barr for him saying that we need people to show “respect and support” for law enforcement or they risk finding “themselves without the police protection they need”.
Holder finished with: “It is antithetical to the most basic tenets of equality and justice, and it undermines the need for understanding between law enforcement and certain communities and flies in the face of everything the Justice Department stands for.”
