Whitehouse defends Obama's pick for attorney general

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse spoke today in defense of what may be shaping up as President-elect Barack Obama's most controversial cabinet choice, Eric H. Holder Jr.'s nomination to be attorney general.

With confirmation hearings to begin Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Whitehouse is a member, Republicans have signaled that they will have tough questions for the nominee. Among them will be questions about Holder's role, as former President Bill Clinton's deputy attorney general, in certain presidential pardons that raised protests as Clinton left office.

In a Senate speech strongly backing Holder, Whitehouse did not directly address any of the contentious issues likely to be raised Thursday. But he did allude to them indirectly and he offered a personal endorsement as a onetime U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who has worked with Holder.

"I know Eric Holder,'' Whitehouse said. "When I was a United States attorney, he was my colleague as the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, and then my boss when he became deputy attorney general. I have great personal confidence in him. In our work at the department, the U.S. attorneys saw firsthand in Eric -- over and over -- the qualities of temperament, intelligence, judgment and independence that are essential for an attorney general, and especially for an attorney general who takes office during a time when the department is in distress.''

As to the potential objections to Holder's nomination, Whitehouse said, "I've listened with a great deal of interest to some of the things that have been said in this chamber about Eric Holder and his character. Indeed, there's been a not-so-subtle effort to question whether Mr. Holder is sufficiently independent of political influence to serve this nation as our attorney general. I cannot speak to the motivations behind this effort, but I can say this: Eric Holder is a man who spent 12 years as a line prosecutor prosecuting corrupt politicians of both parties. He's a man who was sufficiently politically independent for President Ronald Reagan to nominate him as a judge. This is a man who, as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, indicted and convicted Dan Rostenkowski, the Democratic Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and one of the most powerful men in Washington. This is a man who recommended to Attorney General Janet Reno that she appoint an independent counsel to investigate President Clinton's Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt. This is a man who advised Attorney General Reno to expand the scope of the investigation by Kenneth Starr into the Monica Lewinsky affair investigation.''

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