Eric Holder Warns Trump’s ‘Aberrant’ DOJ Interference in Roger Stone Case ‘Endangers the Fabric of Our Democracy’
Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder called out President Donald Trump’s “aberrant and inconsistent” criticism of cases involving allies like Roger Stone, warning that the president’s political interference in Justice Department prosecutions “endangers the fabric of our democracy.”
Holder’s comments came in a statement released to MSNBC’s Ari Melber, who reviewed what had been a tumultuous 36 hours, in which Trump publicly blasted the DOJ sentence recommendation of his longtime confidante as a “miscarriage of justice,” the DOJ abruptly reversed that decision, the four prosecutors on the case subsequently withdrew and one resigned from his job, the Trump White House unexpectedly pulled the Treasury Department nomination of the attorney who oversaw the Stone case, Trump publicly attacked the judge in the Stone case amid news reports that Attorney General Bill Barr is personally intervening in high-profile DOJ cases of Trump confidantes, and then Trump praised Barr for intervening, giving the president the exact outcome he wanted.
“So I’m reporting these facts to you to make a broader point,” Melber explained. “If you spend time with us on The Beat, I think you know where we’re going. This is not just another Trump Administration scandal or another fight over certain tactics at the Justice Department.”
“All the news was breaking last night. I was able to catch up with Eric Holder and I want to read to you his statement in full,” Melber said. “He says ‘The action taken today is aberrant and inconsistent with the Justice Department acting in a traditional, nonpolitical way.’ He continues: ‘It disrespects the career prosecutors whom I greatly respects…actions such as these put at risk the perceived and real neutral enforcement of our laws and ultimately endanger the fabric of our democracy.’ He continued, in the statement he sent me last night, to say: ‘Those involved in the decision must be called on to explain their actions. This is a sad day for an institution to which I owe so much.'”
Melber noted that Holder rarely speaks out about his disapproval with the Trump administration, but that he is far from alone in criticizing Trump’s heavy hand in this case.
“Even Trump’s own allies who, of course, famously, publicly backed him in this recently resolved impeachment trial” are speaking out, Melber noted. “They also felt the need to register disapproval. Senators in the Republican Party saying Trump absolutely should have stayed out of this.”
“This is about credible evidence and allegations of abusing presidential power to enforce the laws, to undercut nonpartisan law itself,” Melber concluded. “And it comes at a time when many are asking just how much more our democracy can withstand?”
Watch the video above, via MSNBC.
