Eric Holder Jr., the country's first black U.S. attorney general, is slated to announce his resignation Thursday after a tumultuous career marked by national security threats, civil rights advances, overhauls to the criminal justice system and over five years of fights with Republicans in Congress, NPR reported.
Sources close to him said that Holder, 63, intends to leave the Justice Department immediately after his successor is chosen, a process that could run through 2014 and spill over into next year. A former U.S. government official says Holder has been increasingly "adamant" about his choice to leave in the near future out of fear that he otherwise could be locked in to stay for the duration of President Obama's second term.
Holder holds the title of the fourth longest tenured AG in history and is already one of the longest serving members of the Obama administration. Hundreds of employees waited in lines, as many as three rows deep, for his return in early February 2009 to the Justice Department. He had worked as a young corruption prosecutor and a deputy attorney general there – the second in command – during the Clinton administration.
But some of that prestige faded partially because of the politicized nature of the job and because of Holder's own rhetoric, such as a Black History Month speech in 2009 where he said the country was "a nation of cowards" when it came to talking open and honestly about racial tension.
The decision to quit was Holder's, the two sources told NPR. adding that the White House would have kept him in his role for the full eight years. The Obama administration also wants to avoid what could be a heated nomination fight for his successor. Holder and President Obama discussed his departure numerous times and finalized things in a long meeting over Labor Day weekend at the nation's capital.
