Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Holder's Former Law Firm Brags About Its GOP Ties

We recently learned that Attorney General Eric Holder's old law firm has alarmingly close ties to the Republican National Committee (RNC) and key figures from the George W. Bush administration.

Now we learn that the firm, Covington & Burling, actually brags on its Web site about its role in helping protect Karl Rove's e-mails that were stored on RNC servers.

Alabama attorney and Siegelman-case whistleblower Jill Simpson helped break the initial report about Holder's old firm. And Douglas Yates, an alert Legal Schnauzer reader from Fairbanks, Alaska, has added to it by revealing that Covington & Burling actually brags about its handiwork on behalf of the RNC--and Karl Rove.

Yates spotted this gem on the C&B Web site:


We represented the Republican National Committee in connection with investigations by the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight and Government Reform Committees regarding US attorney firings and the hosting of e-mail accounts for White House officials.

And we're supposed to believe that Eric Holder, a former member of this firm, is going to aggressively go after Karl Rove for possible wrongdoing?

Simpson says Holder's conflicts of interest could not be more clear. And they cover both the U.S. attorney firings and political prosecutions, such as the Don Siegelman and Paul Minor cases:


It seems Covington denied the RNC e-mails to the House Judiciary Committee on the firing of the nine U.S. attorneys and the political prosecutions. What that means is that Holder's very firm denied the e-mails in the Don Siegelman case, and the Paul Minor case. In fact they have been the ones negotiating with Congress, and I don't believe they have ever turned over the RNC e-mails at Chattanooga. So there you have it--Holder's firm protected Karl Rove from turning over the e-mails on the nine U.S. attorneys and the Siegelman and Minor matters, all while Holder was at that firm.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, LS, that is the way the game is played here in Washington. It's a very small club of insiders calling the shots. Don't have a clue how that's going to change.

theBhc said...

A much fuller investigation was presented here:


AG Holder's Former Employer

Kathleen said...

Hmmmm, juicey...did Obama's team vet Holder before nominating him? Surely everyone in D.C. knew what Holder's firm was and who their high profile clients were.

Democratic leadership really drops the ball when it comes to upholding the law and exerting strict ethical rules...they never raised the conflict of interest question about Holder, or Harriet Miers who also was Dubya's lawyer, as well as his WH Counsel. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was mewling about how Miers was being mistreated by the right wing, instead of challenging the nomination on the inherent conflict of interest from the continuing duty any attorney has to a client, former, current, dead, even. It's depressing. No one is above the law, my ass.

onlique estefan said...

President Obama has repeatedly said that a health care overhaul "will be paid for" and that he won't sign a bill that isn't deficit-neutral. But neither the House bill nor the Senate HELP Committee bill meets that criteria. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation, the House bill as introduced would add a net $239 billion over 10 years to the deficit, while the HELP Committee bill racks up more, $597 billion over 10 years.

Obama has also said he has "identified two-thirds of those costs to be paid for by tax dollars that are already being spent right now." But "identified" is the operative word. These savings are estimates and whether around $650 billion (about two-thirds of the cost of health care over 10 years) can be saved remains to be seen. Most of the money would come from Medicare, but cuts in payments to insurers and practitioners aren't popular measures that move easily through Congress.

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