AG Eric Holder may have to go to help POTUS dig out from under mounting scandals.
Credit: theatlantic.com
May 10 was supposed to be about health care and moms. The White House message of the day was that the health care law is pro-motherhood. The law’s detractors, with their “political bickering,” “tall tales,” and “political games,” are, by implication, against motherhood.
The President delivered this message two days before Mothers Day at a White House event. But his message never did get out. Instead, it was buried beneath a pile of bad news that same day when an IRS official apologized for her agency’s targeting of conservative groups, ABC News reported that the Administration had scrubbed references to al-Qaida from its official talking points on Benghazi last September, the Washington Post revealed that the HHS Secretary was hitting up companies her department regulates for contributions to a group with close White House ties, and the Justice Department told the Associated Press that it had monitored the phone traffic of some of its reporters and editors.
The White House lost control of the narrative on May 10. Nearly four weeks later, it has not regained it. But there is a way, in my view, to take it back.
It has badly bungled the IRS story, with its shifting accounts of who knew what when, although more recent revelations of agency employees partying at taxpayer expense have also helped keep the story alive. At first, we were assured, the targeting was the work of the government behemoth’s rogue Cincinnati affiliate. The White House, it was declared, knew nothing. It didn’t even know that the IRS Inspector General was conducting an “audit” (as opposed to an investigation) of the matter. Then it turned out that the Treasury Secretary himself knew of the audit and that it contained bad news for the agency well in advance of its release. Next it was admitted that the White House Counsel became aware of the audit and of its likely findings on April 24. Then it emerged that the counsel had told the President’s Chief of Staff. Only the President, we are told, remained in the dark. He learned of the whole affair when it was reported weeks later.
It is one thing for the President not to know what’s going on in Cincinnati or even in the Treasury Secretary’s office, located immediately adjacent to the White House grounds. But when the President is said not to know what’s going on a few steps down the hall from the Oval Office, it all starts to look silly – and just a little suspicious.
The IRS debacle is a self-inflicted wound. There is not a scintilla of evidence that the White House directed the IRS to go after conservative groups seeking 501(c)(4) tax status. Nor is there evidence that anyone at Treasury or the White House pressured the Inspector General to alter his findings. What keeps this story churning is not so much the President’s political enemies as it is his staff’s inability to tell a consistent and coherent story. There is nothing wrong with the President knowing that a damaging report is about to surface from within his Administration. In seeking to “protect” the President (from what, it’s not clear), his staff has made him look a bit ridiculous and fed the controversy in the bargain.
The DOJ’s snooping on reporters is another matter entirely. That was bound to do the President political harm. It’s not so much that it offends the general public. A Pew poll taken last month showed that the public, at least at that point, didn’t care a whole lot about any of the scandals, but was least interested in this one. The problem is that it offends the President’s base and, more importantly, the news industry.
The anti-Bush movement that helped propel Barack Obama to the White House had its roots in opposition to the War on Terror generally and the Iraq War in particular. The new President soon proved a disappointment to his truest believers. In addition to keeping Guantanamo open, he continued the (successful) Bush surge in Iraq, instituted another (albeit unsuccessful) surge in Afghanistan, and expanded the use of CIA-controlled drones against terrorist targets, among other sins. That portion of the President’s base has been quietly – and sometimes not so quietly – seething for years. So it’s hardly surprising that revelations of the DOJ’s surveillance of reporters to pursue national security leaks has produced strident criticism in such places as the Daily Beast, Daily Kos, and the Huffington Post.
But the President’s real problem is that his Attorney General has mortally offended the corporate news industry. Huge, old school news organizations like the New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, CNN and others have been very deferential to the President. Their docility is due in part to their decline. For good or ill, the industry is hemorrhaging influence and profits, increasingly edged out by thousands of smaller competitors. As a source of news, it is no match for the White House itself, which has effectively employed social media, its own website, and a network of sympathetic organizations to communicate with its most likely supporters, further diminishing the role of the traditional press. Presidents used to need the press to reach their followers. This President has done just fine by keeping them at a distance. The White House press corps whines about its waning access, but seemed resigned to its more humble estate.
Until May 10. The disclosure that the Justice Department had monitored phone traffic of AP reporters and editors roused their animal spirits. The President first tried to mollify them by announcing a kinder, gentler policy in pursuing terrorists. When that failed, the DOJ offered the big news outlets off-the-record briefings detailing how it will be nicer to reporters in the future. Such briefings, in which Administration officials confidentially discuss a matter with reporters with the understanding that they will not be quoted, are a staple of journalism. Much of what you read or see reported has its roots in off-the-record conversations between a reporter and his or her source. So when some of the most important representatives of the mainstream news industry, including the New York Times, AP, CNN, Fox News and others boycotted the briefings, it became clear that the President’s problems with this group were lasting and grave.
All of that made Attorney General Eric Holder a marked man. Holder had been hauled up before a Congressional committee on May 15, where his repeated assertions of “I don’t know” provoked bipartisan anger and frustration. But one thing he did know: he has never heard of, much less been involved in, the potential prosecution of a reporter in conjunction with a leak investigation. When Hank Johnson (D‑GA), who rose to YouTube stardom with his fears that expansion of a US military facility on Guam would cause the island to “tip over,” as well as by his imagery of a cage match between a giant and 30 midgets (for which he later (sort of) apologized), asked Holder about the Department’s authority to prosecute journalists in connection with leak investigations, Holder replied:
“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.”
Just four days later, the Washington Post reported that Holder had approved a search warrant that empowered agents to monitor a Fox News reporter. The FBI affidavit in support of the search warrant said that there was “probable cause that the Reporter has committed a violation” of the Espionage Act, “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator” of the government employee who leaked the information.
Now a good lawyer could no doubt argue that telling a judge that there is “probable cause” that a reporter violated the Espionage Act is somehow different from a “potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material,” and I am not accusing the Attorney General of lying under oath. But it is hard to square his sweeping, categorical sworn statement on May 15 with his approval of the subpoena against the reporter. Whether he perjured himself is a determination best left to the courts.
What I am suggesting is that the President needs to find a way to get on top of this matter that is causing him so much political anguish. The big news corporations may not hold the sway they once did, but there’s nothing to be gained from poking them in the eye. A dramatic gesture is needed and accepting the Attorney General’s resignation seems just the thing. The investigation of Mr. Holder could be fairly conducted by the Justice Department once he is no longer in office, nullifying the criticism that Mr. Holder should not oversee the investigation of himself and blunting calls for a special prosecutor. A US Attorney would decide whether to seek an indictment. If charges were brought, an impartial jury would decide their merits. Holder’s resignation would, so far as possible in our hyper-politicized age, remove the matter from the realm of politics. And that would be good politics for the President.
The President also would derive political gain from letting the press claim a scalp and salvage some dignity and self-respect in the process. It would help return them to their more quiescent state, making it more likely that they would downplay and marginalize the IRS and Benghazi controversies.
It would be a difficult move for the President. Holder is reportedly very close to Valerie Jarrett, one of the President’s most trusted advisers. The New York Times also notes that Holder’s wife is tight with Mrs. Obama. But Mr. Holder would surely understand that this isn’t personal, it’s business. And he’s become, as he might say in a resignation letter, a “distraction.”
His departure would perhaps allow the President to shift the focus back to his agenda in support of health care and motherhood.