As Senate Republicans continue to hold up a vote to confirm Loretta Lynch as the new U.S. Attorney General, outgoing AG Eric Holder broke his silence and spoke with MSNBC on the matter.
In a print interview with Trymaine Lee, Holder said it makes “little or no sense” for the GOP to actively delay Lynch’s confirmation, especially when she is unopposed by their own witnesses and they have a particular dislike for the current attorney general.
As for beliefs that there is a racial tinge to the holdup — a sentiment infamously voiced by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) on the Senate floor this week — Holder was skeptical:
My guess is that there is probably not a huge racial component to this, that this is really just D.C. politics, Washington at its worst. A battle about something that is not connected to this nominee—holding up this nominee. I think that’s the main driver here.
Holder also commented on the ongoing investigation surrounding the discovery of a black man hanging from a tree in Mississippi. The local NAACP has identified the man as Otis Byrd, 54, but the rest of the case remains shrouded in mystery.
“The FBI, the civil rights division, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of Mississippi are looking into the matter to determine if there are any federal violations of law that occurred,” Holder told MSNBC. “If it’s a potential hate crime –- we simply don’t know enough facts, we’re still in the process of trying to gather those facts, but we do have a substantial federal presence to determine what the facts are.”
Read the full interview here.
