Answer: Neither. It’s Valerie Jarrett.
In Daniel Klaidman’s “Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency,” excerpts of which were obtained by Politico’s Mike Allen, Klaidman tells of a heated exchange between the two that almost turned physical in the West Wing.
Klaidman writes that Axelrod, then Obama’s senior adviser, was “incensed” because he had heard that “Holder and his aides were spreading the word that he was trying to improperly influence the Justice Department.”
“Axelrod, who knew all too well that even the hint of White House meddling with Justice Department investigations could detonate a full-blown scandal, had been careful not to come close to that line,” Klaidman writes.
So after a Cabinet meeting ended, Axelrod apparently made a “beeline for the attorney general.”
“’Don’t ever, ever accuse me of trying to interfere with the operations of the Justice Department,’ he warned Holder after confronting him in the hallway,” according to Klaidman’s account.
“’I’m not Karl Rove,’ Axelrod added, referring to George Bush’s political consigliere, who had been accused of pressuring Justice to fire politically unpopular US attorneys.”
But Holder, Klaidman writes, didn’t take the verbal assault well: ”Holder did not appreciate being publicly dressed down by the president’s most senior political adviser.”
“Determined to stand his ground against Tammany Hall, the A.G. ripped into him in full view of other White House staffers. ‘That’s bullshit,’ he replied vehemently. The two men stood chest to chest. It was like a school yard fight back at their shared alma mater, Stuyvesant, the elite public high school for striving kids from New York City.”
Ultimately, Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett stepped in to break things up.
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