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 Holder, an unapologetic liberal voice and one of President Barack
Obama's closest allies, will remain in office until a successor is
nominated and confirmed. His nearly six-year term, marked by civil
rights advances and frequent fights with Congress, made him one of
the nation's longest serving attorneys generals.
"I will never leave the work. I will continue to serve," Holder,
with Obama at his side, said during a brief White House announcement
of his departure.
The next attorney general will face many challenges, including
managing counter-terror initiatives aimed at Islamic State
militants, balancing privacy rights against government surveillance
efforts, and deciding whether to continue attempts to prosecute
former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, now living in Russia,
for revealing surveillance secrets.
Holder's successor also will oversee a series of cases against banks
and individuals over the manipulation of foreign exchange rates, and
must decide whether to continue Holder's effort to scale back the
prosecution of nonviolent drug offenders.
Holder's departure could set off a tense confirmation fight with
Republicans in a lame-duck U.S. Senate session scheduled after the
Nov. 4 midterm elections, although the chamber's majority Democrats
can invoke rules making it easier to get around Republican efforts
to block confirmation.
Republicans hope to gain a Senate majority in the elections, making
it likely Obama will send up a nomination before a new Congress
convenes in January.
A White House official said Obama has not made a decision on a
Holder replacement. Names floated for the job include Manhattan U.S.
Attorney Preet Bharara, Solicitor General Don Verrilli, former
Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli, California Attorney General
Kamala Harris, Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch and
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.
Holder forcefully embodied many of the president's most liberal
positions, including support for more gun control, criticism of
America's prison system and a desire to try terrorism suspects in
civilian instead of military courts.
Despite a drumbeat of Republican criticism since becoming attorney
general in 2009, he was one of the last three original members of
Obama's cabinet, along with Education Secretary Arne Duncan and
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
Republicans responded to Holder's decision to step down with harsh
assessments of his tenure, and gave a preview of the difficulties
Obama will face in getting a successor confirmed.
"I will be scrutinizing the President’s replacement nominee to
ensure the Justice Department finally returns to prioritizing law
enforcement over partisan concerns," Senate Republican leader Mitch
McConnell of Kentucky said.
Holder made civil rights a cornerstone of his tenure, bringing a
series of cases against local police for using excessive force,
suing the state of Arizona over a law aimed at Hispanic immigrants
and successfully blocking many state voter ID laws before the 2012
election, likening them to Jim Crow-style poll taxes.
He visited Ferguson, Missouri, last month, promising a Justice
Department investigation after the shooting death of a black
teenager by a white policeman led to violent clashes with police.
While Holder has no immediate plans once he steps down, a Justice
Department official said, he has told friends that he wants to find
a way to help restore trust between law enforcement and minority
communities.
Holder built a name more on the people he did not prosecute than on
those he did, which is unusual for an attorney general.
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The Justice Department did not criminally charge any major Wall
Street firm or executive for fraud in connection with the 2007-2009
financial crisis. Holder also steered clear of criminal charges
against CIA agents involved in waterboarding, an Arizona sheriff
investigated for civil rights violations and disgraced cyclist Lance
Armstrong, who admitted using performance enhancing drugs. Holder
had previously signaled his plans to step down by the end of the
year, and the Justice Department said he finalized his decision at a
White House meeting earlier this month.
Holder was a natural choice for attorney general after campaigning
for Obama in 2008, when he took on the sensitive job of helping to
vet Obama's choices for a vice presidential nominee.
His resume included Ivy League degrees, a job prosecuting corruption
and a judgeship in Washington. Holder served in the Justice
Department's No. 2 job under Democratic President Bill Clinton.
The Senate confirmed him on a 75-21 vote in 2009, reflecting some
Republican uneasiness about Holder's liberal views and about his
role in Clinton's pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich in January
2001.
Holder quickly reassured Republicans when he dropped the Justice
Department's corruption case against Ted Stevens, a former
Republican senator from Alaska whom lawmakers had sympathy for.
Prosecutors in the case improperly withheld evidence from Stevens'
defense lawyers.
The honeymoon began to fade during Holder's first month in office in
February 2009 when, in a speech on civil rights, he said America was
acting as a "nation of cowards." Critics denounced the comment as
not sufficiently patriotic.
Later, he infuriated Republicans when he reopened a criminal
investigation into the CIA's use of waterboarding and other harsh
interrogation methods - the same probe that ended with no
prosecutions. Many Republicans thought the CIA's actions were
defensible and legal.
Holder's battles with Republicans reached a peak in 2012 when the
Republican-led House of Representatives voted largely along party
lines to find him in contempt for withholding documents from them.
Obama claimed privilege over the documents about how the Justice
Department responded to revelations about a botched
anti-gun-trafficking program along the U.S.-Mexico border known as
Operation Fast and Furious.
(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton, Susan Heavey, David
Ingram, Aruna Viswanatha)
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