Eric Holder

Up to now, it looked like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was racing former SecState Condi Rice in a quest to rack up the most frequent-flier miles . But it seems Clinton might have competition from an unlikely source: Attorney General Eric Holder , who has been quite the jet-setter of late. We hear he's planning a trip next month to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries. That intercontinental jaunt will cap off a summer that has included visits by the AG to Denmark, Germany, Guam, Malaysia and Singapore.

We were disappointed to read David Ignatius's June 9 op-ed column, " A mediocre attorney general ," purporting to represent the views of a number of unnamed Washington lawyers about Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s tenure. Mr. Ignatius didn't contact us, nor any of the 22 other former senior Justice Department officials who have signed this letter , for his column. Our work, spanning a wide range of issues that come before the department — from national security prosecutions to violent crime prevention, from...

Even the nation's highest justice official has to fulfill his civic obligations. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was in D.C. Superior Court Tuesday morning with dozens of other District residents called for jury duty. Holder sat in the last row of Judge Stuart Nash's courtroom along with other prospective jurors as the judge gave details of the criminal case. It involves the robbery of a cell phone at 14th and Park Roads NW. Holder's three FBI agents waited outside the courtroom.

When embattled Attorney General Eric Holder said last week that the only reason he'd leave his job was if he got really, really tired — when fatal "fatigue" finally set in — he may have blazed a new trail. It's nearly unheard of for such high-ranking public officials to claim that they're just too tuckered out to forge on. Usually, it's that they want to spend more time with their families. (That's a tried-and-true classic.) Or that they want to serve their country in other ways.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT.): Good morning. Glad to see all of you familiar faces in this -- in our hearing room. I'm thinking Senator Specter and I have spent a significant portion of our lives in this -- in this room. I look around and I'm missing one of the -- one of the senators I sat here with for over 30 years, Senator Biden, who has now left the Senate for other duties of sorts. And so I welcome all of you. Yesterday, we met in the Senate Caucus Room from 9:30 to 7:15 so every senator, Republican and Democratic alike, would...

We were disappointed to read David Ignatius's June 9 op-ed column, " A mediocre attorney general ," purporting to represent the views of a number of unnamed Washington lawyers about Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s tenure. Mr. Ignatius didn't contact us, nor any of the 22 other former senior Justice Department officials who have signed this letter , for his column. Our work, spanning a wide range of issues that come before the department — from national security prosecutions to violent crime prevention, from...

Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday became the first Obama administration official to be held in contempt by a congressional panel. Ed O'Keefe and Sari Horwitz reported from the House Oversight and Government reform Committee hearing on Holder: A House panel voted Wednesday to hold  Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.  in contempt for failing to cooperate with a congressional inquiry into  Operation "Fast and Furious," ...

Attorney general nominee Eric H. Holder Jr. won support yesterday from another Republican lawmaker, all but ensuring his candidacy will proceed smoothly and not fall to a GOP filibuster. Holder, a former judge and U.S. attorney in the District, met Friday morning with Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) and picked up his endorsement a day after a grueling confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Eric Holder understands the unique role of the Attorney General and further, I think he's...

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Tuesday vowed to be "aggressive" in challenging voting laws that restrict minority rights, using a speech in Texas to make his case on the same day a federal court was considering the legality of the state's new voter ID legislation. "Let me be clear: We will not allow political pretexts to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious rights," Holder said in the speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is scheduled on Thursday to begin a series of meetings with top news executives as part of an ongoing review of how federal authorities investigate reporters. The meetings are part of an effort to quell concerns about the Justice Department investigations into journalists revealing sensitive government information. The meetings come as President Obama has ordered a review of the department's guidelines regarding reporters after federal...

People are looking for the wrong "scandal" about Attorney General Eric Holder. The problem with Holder is the plain fact that, in the judgment of a wide range of legal colleagues, he has been a mediocre attorney general. Holder's mistakes in management and judgment are clear in the current controversy about leak investigations. He was silent as zealous prosecutors overrode the Justice Department's guidelines for subpoenaing reporters ; he recused himself from the case but bizarrely doesn't seem to have kept a written...

Eric Holder is in a mess of his own making . More than two weeks ago, the attorney general testified to the House Judiciary Committee in categorical terms: "With regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material, that is not something that I have ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be a wise policy. " Then The Post published the text of an affidavit Holder had authorized in an espionage case saying there was "probable cause" to believe journalist James Rosen was a...

So, Attorney General Eric Holder approved a search warrant targeting Fox News's James Rosen for the crime of journalism with malice aforethought. Then the Justice Department shopped around for a judge who would keep the surveillance of professional and private e-mails secret. Then the department fought the public disclosure of the warrant since it wanted the flexibility to continue the investigation "for many years. " Then, according to Daniel Klaidman of the Daily Beast , Holder read the details of this operation in...

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is scheduled on Thursday to begin a series of meetings with top news executives as part of an ongoing review of how federal authorities investigate reporters. The meetings are part of an effort to quell concerns about the Justice Department investigations into journalists revealing sensitive government information. The meetings come as President Obama has ordered a review of the department's guidelines regarding reporters after...

As the nation's top law enforcement official, Eric Holder is privy to all kinds of sensitive information. But he seems to be proud of how little he knows. Why didn't his Justice Department inform the Associated Press, as the law requires, before pawing through reporters' phone records ? "I do not know," the attorney general told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday afternoon, "why that was or was not done. I simply don't have a factual basis to answer that question.

In President Obama's first term, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was a lightning rod for congressional Republicans who criticized the administration's handling of law enforcement issues. But for the past several months, the nation's top law enforcement official has been virtually invisible from the national stage, granting few interviews and successfully avoiding the kinds of controversies that have plagued the Justice Department in recent years. His respite...

Being a political football is no fun. Just ask Eric H. Holder Jr., the nation's attorney general, who found himself caught in the middle of a long-time-coming scrum between congressional Republicans and President Obama this past week. Just hours before a House committee was set to consider holding him in contempt over the Justice Department's refusal to turn over documents related to the Operation Fast and Furious gun-running sting, Obama invoked executive privilege to bar those documents from...

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Tuesday that he recused himself from involvement in a Justice Department leak investigation that secretly acquired telephone records of Associated Press journalists. But in response to questions at a news conference, he defended the department's conduct in probing what he described as one of the damaging leaks he has seen. In a letter to Holder and his deputy Tuesday, a media coalition rejected what it called "an overreaching dragnet for...

Correction: An earlier version of this column referred to Chechnya as a country. It is a Russian republic. This version has been corrected. Attorney General Eric Holder is defending the decision to read Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect, his Miranda warning, telling CNN that cutting off his questioning " was totally consistent with the laws that we have. " That may be true. But three years ago, Holder admitted that "the laws we have" are...