Will Eric Holder stay in his job as the top law dog in the Obama administration’s second term? Or will he decide there are “still things I want to do?” as he told students at the University of Baltimore.
Holder said he still must speak with both Obama and his own family while considering what he would contribute if he stayed on as
“That’s something that I’m in the process now of trying to determine,” he said.
Holder, 61, said the process included asking himself, “Do I think that there are things that I still want to do? Do I have some gas left in the tank?”
A White House spokesman had no comment on Holder’s future.
Several Cabinet members, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, are weighing whether leaving before Obama’s second term begins in January is the right time. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said she intends to move on.
Holder served in the U.S. Justice Department’s No. 2 position under President Bill Clinton, and Obama appointed him attorney general in 2009. Both presidents are Democrats.
It is rare for an attorney general to serve more than four years, and Republicans tried to oust Holder after a botched department operation called “Fast and Furious” that targeted gun trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives dismissed a congressional inquiry into Fast and Furious as politically motivated, and the Justice Department’s inspector general cleared Holder of any wrongdoing.
Holder has not previously committed one way or the other to serving in a second Obama term.
He worked on Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, and the two prominent black lawyers have similar backgrounds, including immigrant fathers and degrees from Columbia University.
