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Attorney General Eric Holder speaks during a Sept. 4 news conference at the Justice Department in Washington. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP hide caption

Attorney General Eric Holder speaks during a Sept. 4 news conference at the Justice Department in Washington.

This post was last updated at 4:44 p.m. ET.

Eric Holder Jr., the nation's first black U.S. attorney general, will resign his post after a tumultuous tenure marked by civil rights advances, national security threats, reforms to the criminal justice system and 5 1/2 years of fights with Republicans in Congress.

President Obama said on Thursday that Holder, 63, intends to leave the Justice Department as soon as his successor is confirmed, a process that could run through 2014 and even into next year. A former U.S. government official says Holder has been increasingly "adamant" about his desire to leave soon. Holder and President Obama discussed his departure several times and finalized things in a long meeting over Labor Day weekend at the White House.

Holder already is one of the longest-serving members of the Obama Cabinet and currently ranks as the fourth-longest tenured AG in history. Hundreds of employees waited in lines, stacked three rows deep, in early February 2009 to witness his return to the Justice Department, where he previously worked as a young corruption prosecutor and as deputy attorney general the second in command during the Clinton administration.

But some of that early glow faded in part due to the politicized nature of the job and in part because of Holder's own rhetoric, such as a 2009 Black History Month speech where he said the country was "a nation of cowards" when it comes to discussions about racial tension.

Five years later, violence erupted between police and protesters in Ferguson, Mo., after a white policeman killed an unarmed black 18-year-old. And this time, the White House dispatched Holder to speak his piece, in effect jump-starting that conversation and helping to settle nerves in the frayed community.

Another huge controversy over his decision to try the Sept. 11 plotters in a New York courthouse in the shadow of the twin towers of the World Trade Center prompted venomous reaction from lawmakers, New York City officials and some victims' families.

Under pressure that threatened his job and his legacy, the attorney general reversed his decision and instead sent the cases to military court where they continue to languish even as Osama bin Laden's son-in-law and other terrorism defendants are serving life sentences in maximum-security prisons on American soil.

Holder most wants to be remembered for his record on civil rights: refusing to defend a law that defined marriage as between one man and one woman; suing North Carolina and Texas over voting restrictions that disproportionately affect minorities and the elderly; launching 20 investigations of abuses by local police departments; and using his bully pulpit to lobby Congress to reduce prison sentences for nonviolent drug crimes. Many of those sentences disproportionately hurt minority communities.

And then there's his relationship with Congress. From the day Holder's nomination was announced, Republicans led by Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., signaled that he would be a political lightning rod.

The attorney general's portfolio, which spans sensitive law enforcement cases and hot-button social issues including marijuana and gay marriage, didn't help. But even longtime aides say Holder didn't do enough to help himself by shrugging off preparations and moot sessions before congressional appearances and speaking off the cuff and obliquely.

Things hit a crisis point when the GOP-led House voted him in contempt for refusing to hand over documents about a gun trafficking scandal known as Fast and Furious. That represented the first time an attorney general had ever been rebuked that way, but still Holder held on to his job.

In the end, the decision to leave was Holder's alone two sources told NPR that the White House would have been happy to have him stay a full eight years and to avoid what could be a contentious nomination fight for his successor.

The attorney general told DOJ staff the news this morning and called civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Ethel Kennedy, the widow of former AG Robert F. Kennedy.

The sources say a leading candidate for the job is Solicitor General Don Verrilli, the administration's top representative to the Supreme Court and a lawyer whose judgment and discretion are prized in both DOJ and the White House.

Friends and former colleagues say Holder has made no decisions about his next professional perch, but they say it would be no surprise if he returned to the law firm Covington & Burling, where he spent years representing corporate clients.

The friends say Holder is also considering donating his papers to a university in Washington, D.C., or his native New York, where he could establish a civil rights center to work more on law enforcement interactions with communities of color and host public forums on those issues.

Even though the attorney general has his eyes on the door, the two sources say several more policy and enforcement initiatives are underway and could be announced soon.

For instance, Holder sent a memo to U.S. attorneys Wednesday urging them not to use sentencing enhancements known as "851" tools to gain leverage in plea negotiations with defendants in essence, threatening defendants into avoiding trial with huge amounts of prison time. The practice has been criticized by U.S. District Judge John Gleeson in Brooklyn and other jurists.

Holder is also expected to notify federal prosecutors in coming days that the Justice Department will no longer require defendants who plead guilty to waive their rights to appeal based on ineffective lawyering. Many U.S. attorneys now forgo that practice, but not all.

Long-awaited racial profiling guidelines for federal agents will be released soon, too. Those guidelines will make clear that sexual orientation, ethnicity and religion are not legitimate bases for law enforcement suspicion, but controversial mapping of certain communities including Muslim Americans would still be allowed for national security investigations, one of the sources said.

Update at 4:44 p.m. ET. An Emotional Goodbye:

In an emotional ceremony at the White House on Thursday, President Obama said that saying goodbye to Holder was "bittersweet."

He described the attorney general as having a "deep, abiding commitment to equal justice under the law," and to taking steps that further guarantee everyone's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In his own speech, Holder fought back tears. He said beyond having a strong working relationship with Obama, "I am proud to call you a friend."

Holder said Obama's administration has "done much to make real the promise of our democracy."

Stepping down now, he said, means the end of his public service. But it doesn't mean he'll stop working.

Original post:
Eric Holder To Step Down As Attorney General - npr.org

President Donald Trump's criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions is not wise, according to former attorney general Eric Holder, who served in that role during the Obamaadministration.

"Unprecedented, unwise, and ultimately not helpful to the president. You know, it could be argued that it betrays a mindset of concern. It might be said to evince some consciousness of guilt or some concern that those who are acting independently might do something to him that is negative in nature and that if his appointed attorney general was still in charge, he might not be in as bad a position," Holder said Monday on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show."

Holder's reference to "those who are acting independently" apparently referred to Robert Mueller's probe into alleged Russian collusion, from which Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself.

"There are going to be things that an attorney general is going to do that the president is not going to agree with, and a president really is just going to kind of suck it up and say that the A.G. has the responsibility to enforce the laws. He's got national security responsibilities, and he is an independent actor in a way that other cabinet officials are not," Holder said in the Maddow interview.

Holder added that reports of Trump meeting with nominees for U.S. attorney are "unprecedented . . .you're not supposed to have any contacts a U.S. attorney is not supposed to have any contacts with the White House, except through the Justice Department."

However, he added that Trump meeting with the nominees was not "legally inappropriate."

"With so many things that he does, it's just not the way things are done. It is not the tradition," Holder said in the Maddow interview.

Holder has been a critic of the Trump administration. On Wednesday, he said the administration's policies on crime were "not smart, not tough."

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Eric Holder on Trump: 'Unprecedented, Unwise' to Attack ...

Donald Trumps claims that former president Barack Obama never reached out to the families of fallen solders on Monday really rubbed former attorney general Eric Holder the wrong way.

Holder took to Twitter later that night to denounce Trump and set the record straight.

Stop the damn lying youre the President. I went to Dover AFB with 44 and saw him comfort the families of both the fallen military & DEA, Holder wrote.

He even pulled out his archive of receipts to tweet a photo of him and Obama saluting alongside four soldiers.

During a press conference in the rose garden, Trump said the following when pressed about four soldiers who died on the ground in Niger in early October.

The traditional way, if you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didnt make calls, a lot of them didnt make calls, Trump said.

I like to call when its appropriate, when I think Im able to do it, he continued.

Of course when pressed about his accusation, Trump resorted to his usual excuse, saying that he was told that information.

One thing is for sure, between former White House photographer Pete Souza and Holder, Trump will continuously get checked when he tries to come for their main man Barack.

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Eric Holder Fires Back At Trump Over False Statement ...

Former Attorney General Eric Holder called out President Donald Trumps false remark about former POTUS Barack Obama on Monday, where he claimed that his predecessor did not care enough personally call the families of fallen U.S. soldiers.

Holder urged Trump to Stop lying, posting a photo that showed him standing alongside Obama inthe Dover air force base,Delaware, where both of them comforted the families of the fallen soldiers of the Military and the DEA.

Holders tweet was sparked from a comment that Trump made during an impromptu press conference that he held in the White House Rose Garden on Monday afternoon.

During the conference, he was asked about his silence following the killing of four Army Green Beret soldiers in Niger on Oct. 4. At this, the president replied saying that he had personally taken the time to write a letter to each one of their families and that he would call them up at some point. He went on to remark that while he finds ample time in his busy schedule to attend to something like this,Obama never made it a priority.

"Now it gets to a point where you know, you make four or five of them in one day, its a very, very tough day," Trump said, The Star reported."For me, thats by far the toughest. So the traditional way if you look at President Obama and other presidents most of em didnt make calls, a lot of em didnt make calls. I like to call when its appropriate when I think Im able to do it. They have made the ultimate sacrifice. So generally I would say that I like to call."

Former Attorney General Eric holder called out President Donald Trump for lying about Former President Barack Obama. In this photo, former President Barack Obama (L) and former Attorney General Eric Holder attend the National Peace Officers' Memorial Service at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., May 15, 2013. Photo: Getty Images/ Chip Somodevilla

However, as soon as NBC reporter Peter Alexander challenged Trump to present proof of the fact that his predecessor did not care about the families of U.S. soldiers, the president started to backtrack on his allegation.

I dont know if he did, Trump said. I was told that he didnt often, and a lot of presidents dont. President Obama, I think, probably did sometimes, and maybe sometimes he didnt, I dont know, thats what I was told. All I can do is ask my generals.

This is not the only time that Trump had refused to take responsibility for the inaccuracies in his knowledge about a subject. After he falsely claimed back in February, during a press conference that he had won with the biggest Electoral College margin of victory since former President Ronald Reagan, he was challenged to prove the fact by a reporter. I was given that information, Trump said at the time.

Many Twitter users reacted to Holder's evidence that defended Obama's honor and presidential record:

During Mondays press briefing, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Trumps comment by saying that the president was stating a fact when he said that many of the former presidents did not habitually call the families of fallen soldiers. She further directed a statement to all the former Obama aides: Individuals claiming former presidents, like their bosses, called each family of the fallen, are mistaken.

However, former Obama aide Tommy Vietor told the Star: President Obama spent time with families of the fallen throughout his presidency through letters, calls, visits to Section 60 (for soldiers killed in the War on Terror) at Arlington and regular meetings with Gold Star families.

The rest is here:
Eric Holder Proves Trump Wrong, Tweets Evidence Of Obama ...

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

For a brief period, it appeared the whole NFL kneeling thing was winding down and then bam, back to the drawing board, boys, as Commissioner Roger Goodell apparently didnt tell football players they had to stand for the national anthem, after all.

Whew. For a second there, it seemed like there was going to be a run on Doritos and dip. The groceries, and Sunday snack stashes, appear safe, at least for the time being.

Heres the latest in this whole fake social justice fight fake, because its based on a false narrative that white police randomly and rampantly target blacks and minorities to gun down and kill. Think Colin Kaepernick, circa August 2016, decked in police pig socks.

Anyhow: President Donald Trump has been on the right side of this NFL kneeling issue from the start, calling out league officials for allowing their paid players to use the football field their place of business for political protests. And just this week, Trump took to Twitter to suggest that stripping the NFL of its tax breaks would be a smart move.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders clarified that Trump was referring to the billions of taxpayer dollars that go into the subsidizing of professional sports stadiums.

If this industry [the NFL] is going to use money from American taxpayers to build the very fields they play on, is it really too much to ask that they show respect for the American flag at the beginning of the game? she asked.

No, no it isnt.

Goodell then weighed in, saying the league just needed to move past this controversy, and that we believe everyone should stand for the National Anthem.

How nice. Goodell, who helped fuel the controversy in the first place by refusing to tell players to get off their knees, now wants everybody to move on to play ball, so to speak. Pretty, pretty please, he says. Well, there are matters still to be resolved particularly since the NFL, in response to media reports that claimed Goodell told players to stand up, put out this clarifier: Umm, Goodell didnt say to stand.

Commentary, the message from the NFLread, about the commissioners position on the anthem is not accurate. [T]here will be a discussion of these issues at the owners meeting next week.

Well, dont look for the solution to come from this meeting, either.

The whole anthem-kneeling stunt has little to do with police brutality or police bias or truth, for that matter. Rather, it has to do with fighting a race war that was really ratcheted under the previous White House administration.

It has to do with Eric Holder rather, the Eric Holder style of race warfare.

Holder, the attorney general for Barack Obama, spent much of his federal stint pressing causes for the Oppressed Black Man freeing the felons, for instance, whose crimes he insisted were rooted in skin color, or putting the federal screws to local police, or delivering speeches that labeled the United States as a nation of cowards for failing to discuss and adopt his personal views of race.

Well, Holder may be gone. But his spirit lives on. And its that spirit that seems to be driving much of the NFL players dig-in for kneeling.

NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith has been a busy man-about-town lately, blasting team owners who wont let their players kneel, releasing statements to the press about the poor players rights to free speech and so forth. And Smiths background?

Well, he worked as a trial lawyer and as a counsel to then-Deputy Attorney General Holder in the Department of Justice.

The apple doesnt fall far from the tree, does it?

These days, the NFL seems a lot more like an Obama-Holder face-off against perceived social injustices than it does an arena for professional athleticism. That one of the leading NFL voices of this social justice crusade is directly tied to Holder and that he was probably mentored and guided and influenced by Holder only makes perfect, absolute perfect, sense.

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NFL kneelers -- all hail the Eric Holder - Washington Times