Attorney General Eric Holder said farewell to the Justice Department today, predicting to staffers that as Robert F. Kennedy’s era was viewed as a “golden age” for the DOJ “50 years from now, and maybe even sooner than that, people are gonna look back at the work that you all did and say that this was another golden age.”
“I think we can officially say now that Eric Holder is free,” Holder quipped in reference to the long period between Loretta Lynch’s nomination and confirmation Thursday as the next attorney general.
“But it is not necessarily something that I want; I don’t ever want to be free of — of this great institution. I don’t want to ever be free of the relationships that I have forged with — with so many of you. I don’t want to ever be free of the notion that I am a member of the United States Department of Justice.”
Holder talked about several issues he considers to be the greatest accomplishments of the DOJ under his tenure, including civil rights.
“The LGBT community is something that I have tried to focus on. I think that is the civil rights issue of our time,” he said. “This whole question of same-sex marriage which will be resolved by the court over the next I guess couple of months or so, hopefully that decision will go in a way that I think is consistent with who we say we are as a people.”
“But I also think that that is really just a sign, it’s an indication, it’s one part of the fight for overall LGBT equality. And I think the work that you all have done in that regard is gonna be an integral part of the legacy of this — of this department.”
Holder said “the thing that I think in some ways animates me, angers me, is this whole notion about protecting the right to vote.”
“We celebrated this year the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Voting Rights Act. We went — I went to Selma to commemorate Bloody Sunday. John Lewis was here earlier,” he said. “This nation fought a civil war, endured slavery by another name, dealt with legalized segregation. A civil rights movement in the mid- , early-, mid- and early-’60s transformed this nation.”
“And the notion that we would somehow go back and put in place things that make it difficult — more difficult for our fellow citizens to vote is simply inconsistent with all that’s good about this country, and something that I was bound and determined to fight,” Holder continued. “And our Civil Rights Division has done a superb job in crafting lawsuits based on a Voting Rights Act that was wrongfully gutted by the Supreme Court. And I suspect that we will see successes from those efforts that have — those cases that have been filed.”
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