Eric Holder Should Resign

About Raúl Labrador:

Rep. Raúl Labrador is the U.S. Representative for Idaho's 1st congressional district. He serves on the Committee on Natural Resources and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He previously represented District 14B in the Idaho House of Representatives. Born in Puerto Rico, Rep. Labrador worked as an immigration attorney.

Attorney General Eric Holder should resign. The Attorney General of the United States is the highest law enforcement official in the land.  As such he has an obligation to provide truthful and accurate testimony to Congress. When Attorney General Eric Holder testified before Congress on May 3 that he had learned about Operation Fast and Furious only a few weeks earlier, his statements were either untrue or deliberately misleading.  It is clear from recently-released documents that Mr. Holder did in fact know about Fast and Furious almost a year before his testimony.

I first learned about Fast and Furious early this year from several of my constituents. After researching the matter and finding there was significant evidence of Department of Justice malfeasance, as a member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, I asked Chairman Darrell Issa to hold hearings on the topic.  As I attended the hearings and reviewed the evidence, I was careful not to jump to any conclusions about the extent of Mr. Holder’s involvement. However, the recently published documents that directly link Mr. Holder to Fast and Furious have convinced me that he is either lying or grossly incompetent.

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Attorney General Holder has a troubling pattern of failed cooperation with the legislative branch, beginning with statements made to the U.S. Senate about his involvement in the pardon of fugitive Marc Rich when Holder served as the Clinton administration Deputy Attorney General.  In that case, Holder misled Congress by claiming that he was “unfamiliar” with Marc Rich when he worked on the pardon. As Andrew McCarthy of the National Review has shown, however, Holder had conducted an extensive investigation of Rich and his companies while he was Washington, D.C.’s United States Attorney.  

It is clear he has not been honest about the extent of his involvement with the failed Fast and Furious program and should not be entrusted with managing the Department of Justice.  Attorney General Holder cannot avoid responsibility for his involvement with a government program that directly led to the tragic death of a decorated U.S. Border Patrol agent. As our nation’s top enforcer of the principles of law and justice, Mr. Holder has now lost all credibility and should step down immediately. The question now for Mr. Holder is whether he is only protecting himself or whether he is also protecting others - perhaps all the way to the top of the administration.

• Read more: about Operation Fast and Furious.
• Check out: our editorial cartoons on President Obama.
• Read: about the subpoena issued as a result of Operation Fast and Furious.