Speculation has begun in Washington over whether a massive Justice Department investigation of Associated Press phone records will end up costing Attorney General Eric Holder his job.
Mr. Holder is “a battered survivor of many controversies and this could be the one that finally convinces him or Obama that it is time to go,” the National Journal’s Jill Lawrence writes.
Esquire blogger Charles Pierce adds: “He should be gone. This moment. Not only is this constitutionally abhorrent, it is politically moronic.”
And Northeastern University journalism professor Dan Kennedy tweeted, “It is 8:42. The AP phone story broke at 7:50. Why is Eric Holder still attorney general.”
Of course, only the president knows for sure whether Holder will be forced to step down to help quiet the multiple controversies engulfing the administration, which also include its handling of the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi and the IRS’s investigation of conservative political organizations. But the political stakes for the White House are high.
“The rule of three … means the president’s credibility is truly on the line right now,” NBC’s First Read observes.
Sacrificing Holder might be personally painful to the president. In his book “Kill or Capture” about President Obama’s national security team, Daniel Klaidman notes that Mr. Obama and Holder have become good friends since they met at a dinner party in 2004. And Holder’s wife, obstetrician Sharon Malone, is reportedly very close with first lady Michelle Obama.
Holder has long been controversial, especially with Republicans who voted in June 2012 to hold him in contempt of Congress, the first time a sitting attorney general has been in that position. The issue was Holder’s refusal to turn over certain documents in “Fast and Furious,” a botched federal gun sting operation that allowed hundreds of weapons to flow to Mexico, and which resulted in the death of a US federal agent.
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