Eric Holder

Eric Holder (2009)

Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. (born January 21, 1951 in New York City ) is an American lawyer and politician of the Democratic Party . From February 2009 to April 2015 he was the United States Attorney General ( attorney general of the United States ) and Minister of Justice under US President Barack Obama . Eric Holder is the first African American to achieve this top position. Previously, he was Deputy Attorney General in the administration of President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001 .

Life

Justice Minister Holder at a lecture in March 2011

Eric Holder was born in 1951 in New York City, Bronx . The family roots of his parents point to the Caribbean. Holder's father, Eric Himpton Holder, Sr. (1905-1970) was born in the Parish of St. Joseph in western Barbados and immigrated to the United States in 1916. Holder's mother, Miriam R. Yearwood, was born in New Jersey ; Her parents had also emigrated to the USA from Barbados, Parish Saint Philip.

Holder grew up in Queens and went to Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and Columbia University , where he received his BA in 1973 and JD in 1976. After Columbia Law School , Holder worked for the US Department of Justice from 1976 to 1988 . He was appointed Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia , Washington, by President Ronald Reagan .

In 1993, Holder was appointed United States Attorney for Washington, DC by President Bill Clinton . Clinton nominated him as Assistant Attorney General of the United States in 1997 ; Holder took his oath of office in September 1997. Holder resigned from office in 2001 when the new President George W. Bush took office.

Holder then switched to the private sector, where he worked for the renowned law firm Covington & Burling in Washington DC until 2009. Covington & Burling not only has influential financial customers such as Goldman Sachs , JPMorgan Chase , Citigroup , Bank of America , Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank , but also defended Guantanamo prisoners.

In the run-up to the 2008 presidential election , Holder was part of Barack Obama's campaign team , where he worked with Caroline Kennedy and James A. Johnson , among others . After Obama's election as President of this Holder nominated on 18 November 2008 as United States Attorney General ( attorney general of the United States ) and thus as a de facto Minister of Justice ; ratification by the United States Senate came on February 3, 2009.

When addressing both Houses of Congress in 2009, Holder was Designated Survivor . In the event of an attack on the Capitol, he would have been the highest-ranking survivor and would have succeeded Barack Obama as president.

Holder announced his resignation on September 25, 2014. On November 8, 2014, Obama then nominated Loretta Lynch as his successor. After a long political tug-of-war between President Obama and the Republican Senate majority, Lynch was not confirmed as Holder's successor by the Senate until April 23, 2015, which is why Holder remained in office until then.

Holder temporarily expressed interest in running for the 2020 presidential election in the United States , but later decided against it. In 2020 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Holder lives in Washington with his wife, doctor Sharon Malone, and their three children.

Public statements

Holder (far left) in the Oval Office with President Obama (center) and other guests

In a January 2002 interview with CNN , Holder defended the classification of terrorists as illegal combatants rather than prisoners of war .

When asked about the Goldman Sachs case , Holder stated that his job is not to win cases, but to bring justice to victory. The resources to handle complex cases have been increased to help close the "technological gap" in defense.

Shortly after taking office as Minister of Justice, Holder gave a speech at the American Academy in Berlin on the closure of the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay .

In October 2011, Holder announced details of an attack planned by Iran , which was prevented in cooperation with Mexican authorities.

At the end of 2011, Holder had to answer to the Senate Judiciary Committee due to the practices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in combating the drug war in Mexico. The federal police authority had illegally delivered weapons to drug cartels on a large scale and hoped in this way to stop the weapons, u. a. Machine guns to track. However, the track was soon lost. In December 2010, a US border guard was killed with the weapons smuggled by the ATF. These reports turned out to be a politically motivated misrepresentation of Operation Fast and Furious ; the legitimate activity of the ATF had been massively hindered by the federal prosecutor's office. The Republican Party in Congress attempted to stage a scandal over US Attorney General Eric Holder. After the actual relationships were discovered, some processes in the ATF were redesigned.

Holder had described the global surveillance and espionage affair , which was started by Edward Snowden , in 2013 as "damaging to US interests". In June 2016, no longer in the office of the Attorney General, he described Snowden's actions as “public service”. The “usefulness” of the national debate that has been initiated should be considered “mitigating the penalty”.

literature

• Black US Attorney Brings an Indictment Against Powerful House Committee Chairman . In: Jet . June 20, 1994. Retrieved July 1, 2008.
• Richette L. Haywood: First Black US Attorney in DC . In: Ebony . September 1994. Retrieved July 1, 2008.
• Susan Crabtree: A New Sheriff at Justice . In: Insight on the News . April 28, 1997. Retrieved July 1, 2008.
• Laura B. Randolph: Power Couples . In: Ebony . January 1999. Retrieved July 1, 2008.
• Eric holder jr. , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 22/2013 from May 28, 2013, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Web links

Commons : Eric Holder  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Eric Holder in nndb (English)
• Eric Holder at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia (English)
• German translation of the official résumé
• Answers.com
• Covington & Burling
• The History Makers
• Homeland Security Policy Institute

Individual evidence

1. ^ Andrew Longstreth: Making History (PDF) In: The American Lawyer . June 2008. Archived from the original on January 21, 2009. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 12, 2008. 
2. ↑ A. James Memmott: Obama picks Caroline Kennedy, Holder, Johnson to lead VP search . In: Muckety . June 5, 2008. Archived from the original on July 1, 2008. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 29, 2008. 
3. ↑ Staff reporter: Nominee Confirmed For Deputy Position At the Justice Dept. . In: The New York Times . July 18, 1997. Retrieved November 15, 2008.
4. ↑ http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/1997/September97/366dag.html
5. ↑ Why Can't Obama Bring Wall Street to Justice? Maybe the banks are too big to jail. Or maybe Washington's revolving door is at work . Retrieved May 14, 2012.
6. ↑ http://dailysignal.com/2017/01/09/despite-controversies-holder-had-easier-road-to-confirmation-than-sessions/
7. ^ New York Times: Holder is confirmed as Attorney General
8. ↑ Close Obama confidante: US Attorney General Eric Holder announces resignation. Focus , September 25, 2014, accessed September 27, 2014 . 
9. ↑ Tagesanzeiger: Loretta Lynch is the first black US Secretary of Justice
10. ↑ Eric H. Holder Jr. Biography of the Minister of Justice . America service . February 18, 2009. Retrieved March 27, 2009.
11. ^ " Notable & Quotable " The Wall Street Journal , November 22, 2008, page A13.
12. ↑ Evan Perez, Susanne Craig: US Faces High Stakes In Its Probe of Goldman. Wallstreet Journal, May 1, 2010.
13. ↑ Closing Guantanamo  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - April 2009 (speech, video)  
14. ↑ Dt. Translation of the press release ( memento of the original from October 15, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
15. ↑ http://www.ftd.de/politik/international/:drogenkrieg-us-fahnder-als-helden-in-einem-schlechten-film/60140538.html ( Memento from January 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
16. ^ Fortune: The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal. Retrieved April 8, 2020 .  , June 26, 2012
17. ↑ United States Department of Justice - Office of the Inspector General: A Review of ATF's Operation Fast and Furious and Related Matters (PDF; 4.7 MB), September 2012
18. ↑ Amanda Holpuch: Eric Holder says Edward Snowden performed 'public service' with NSA leak. (HTTPS) In: theguardian.com. May 30, 2016, accessed June 29, 2016 .