Eric Holder And Senator Grassley On Too Big To Jail

Another clip from last week's hearing.

[Note: Transcript, details and discussion of this clip are here.]

Senator Chuck Grassley asks Eric Holder the names of outside consultants DOJ uses to decide whether to prosecute Wall Street banks.  Matt Taibbi wrote about the issue on Monday at Rolling Stone.

Background:

• Senators Bash DOJ for Evasive Response on Too Big To Jail - Frontline Update
• Taibbi: DOJ Pays For Advice Not To Prosecute Wall Street - Rolling Stone

Comments

[DailyBail]

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Thursday criticized Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller for using official government jets to take personal trips on the taxpayer’s dime with automatic budget cuts rapidly approaching.

“I’m really interested in how the attorney general can claim that federal law enforcement agents will be cut, knowing that over the last 5 years the department has allowed for millions of dollars to be spent on personal travel,” said Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/285535-grassley-slams-holder-and-mueller-for-jet-setting-and-hypocrisy

[DailyBail]

"Mr. Holder recognized that in effect, the big banks and their senior executives have a get-out-of-jail-free card."

http://dailybail.com/home/watch-eric-holder-questioned-on-too-big-to-jail.html

[Sagebrush]

I hope Senator Warren gets a chance to question his incompetence. Maybe it's not incompetence, maybe it's plain old greed and corruption. There seems to be a lot of that going around.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/03/elizabeth-warren-senate-banking-committee-hearing-money-laundering

[Cheyenne]

Sage--

I wouldn't put much faith in Warren. She voted for the poster boy of Citigroup bailouts, Jacob Lew, as Treasury Secretary.

http://www.warren.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=339841

Everyone's made a big deal out of the questions she put to DOJ and Treasury officials today over money-laundering. She scored points for the camera, to be sure, and that's important, but frankly? For a lawyer, she's not all that good at controlling a witness.

[Josie]

She's not a lawyer, Cheyenne, she's a law professor. Big, big difference, as you know. A seasoned and talented litigator deposing an incredible witness can be a thing of beauty, given the time. 5 or 10 minutes is a joke. It's kabuki; nothing more.

[DailyBail]

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Attorney General Eric Holder, the top U.S. law-enforcement official, finally admitted this week that bank executives truly are above the law and may commit crimes with virtual impunity.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/holder-admits-mega-banks-are-too-big-to-jail-2013-03-07

[DailyBail]

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — For regulators and prosecutors the first rule of “too big to jail” is don’t talk about “too big to jail”

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/benghazi-on-wall-street-2013-03-07

[john]

Holder Defends Record of Not Prosecuting Financial Fraud

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/16/holder-defends-record-of-not-prosecuting-financial-fraud/

Former attorney general Eric Holder was the honored guest at a Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press reception on Wednesday (leading investigative reporter Murray Waas to reasonably wonder: How’s that again?).

And while I was primarily interested in hearing whether Holder regretted whiffing on torture prosecutions during his tenure (see story: “Holder, Too Late, Calls for Transparency on DOJ Torture Investigation”), I also asked him about whiffing on financial fraud prosecutions.

Specifically, I noted his failure to hold accountable the people responsible for the wide-scale financial fraud that led to the massive economic recession of 2007-2009.

And I noted that after he stepped down from his post in April, he went back to his job at Covington & Burling, the gigantic D.C. law firm whose clients have included many of the big banks that Holder chose not to prosecute. (The reception was actually held at Covington & Burling’s swanky new building downtown. While it was being built — while Holder was still attorney general! — the firm actually kept an 11th-story corner office reserved for his return. He was making over $3 million a year from the firm before his sojourn at the Justice Department; his current salary has not been disclosed.)

Holder bristled at my suggestion that there might be a connection between his current employer and his conduct at Justice, saying that many top prosecutors at Justice had pursued cases as best they could. “We were simply unable to do it under the existing statutes that we had, and given the ways the decision-making worked at those institutions,” he said.

However, Holder had all the statutory authority he needed to prosecute straightforward crimes such as robosigning fraud, perjury in front of Congress by Goldman Sachs executives, or for that matter, HSBC’s money laundering for Mexican drug cartels. He simply chose not to. (In response to another questioner, he denied that any of his decisions not to prosecute were based on the massive legal teams that were fielded against the government.) Moreover, he actively waved off offers of additional help such as the suggestion from Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, that Congress give him more staff for his Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, or extend the statute of limitations on some crimes.

At Wednesday’s event, Holder continued: “It’s an easy thing for people who are not a part of the process” to “ask questions,” he said. “It pisses me off, on the other hand,” for people “not conversant” in the process to “somehow say that I did something that was inconsistent with my oath or that I’m not a person of integrity.”

“I’m proud to be back at the firm,” he said. “It’s a great firm. And I’m proud of the work I did at the Justice Department.”