WASHINGTON — Former Justice Department official Eric H. Holder Jr. emerged Tuesday as Barack Obama's leading candidate for attorney general, and the president-elect's transition team was trying to gauge whether there was sufficient bipartisan support for him in the Senate, sources close to the transition confirmed.
Those sources said that the internal vetting process for Holder was still being completed and that top transition team members and Democratic allies of Obama were working to make sure that Holder would not face any significant obstacles during the confirmation process. One source close to the transition team said that Holder had been offered the job conditionally.
A well-regarded prosecutor turned corporate lawyer in private practice, Holder would be the nation's first African American attorney general. He did not respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment, and the Obama team declined to discuss the matter -- except to say that he had neither been offered the job nor accepted it.
Holder, 57, has been a trailblazer through much of his career. He became the first African American to serve as deputy attorney general in 1997, in the Clinton administration, and the first black acting attorney general in the first few weeks of the Bush administration.
He has also been a Superior Court judge in Washington and the top prosecutor in the high-profile U.S. attorney's office in the nation's capital.
In recent years, Holder has been a litigation partner in the Washington office of the law firm Covington & Burling LLP, handling, among other matters, complex civil and criminal cases, domestic and international advisory matters and internal corporate investigations. He also has been an Obama campaign supporter, and was a leader of Obama's vice presidential search committee.
The biggest issue in any confirmation hearing, Holder's supporters and critics said, would be that as deputy attorney general he had failed to oppose a presidential pardon for then-fugitive financier Marc Rich on the last day of the Clinton administration. Rich's former wife, Denise, was a contributor to former President Clinton's presidential library.
On Tuesday, some Democrats on Capitol Hill said the pardon issue might cause Holder trouble, but that his peripheral role in it was far outweighed by his many positive attributes and accomplishments. Holder, they said, enjoys a broad level of support among senior political leaders and law enforcement officials in both parties.
