"It's strange. No one has reached out to us, members or staff level, so we take this with a certain grain of skepticism," said the staffer, who was not authorized to comment publicly and so spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"It could be a float," or an effort to see how Holder fares in the court of public approval without the Obama team taking responsibility for it, the Republican staffer said.
The Democratic official close to the transition team denied that, and said that Obama associates had done some temperature gauging on the Hill, but mostly among influential Democrats.
In its e-mail, the RNC said: "Instead of bringing the bipartisan 'change' to Washington that he promised voters, Barack Obama is rewarding yet another one of his political loyalists in Eric Holder. The only person who thinks Eric Holder represents 'hope' is Marc Rich."
Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said he was troubled by the Rich pardon. He did not intend to hold up Holder's confirmation over it, he told MSNBC, but said "it is an issue that has to be inquired into."
"We're going to take a very, very close look at his record," especially at Holder's role in the final days of the Clinton administration, Specter said, "with focus on the Marc Rich pardon, where there had been very, very large contributions" by Denise Rich.
"Rich was a fugitive," he said. "They did not follow regular order. And we'll want to know, in some detail . . . what Mr. Holder had to do with that."
There are other Clinton-era actions that Republicans pledged they would look into as well, including leniency granted in 1999 to 16 former members of the Armed Forces of National Liberation, or FALN, which advocates Puerto Rican independence and was linked to about 130 bombings that killed six and injured dozens from 1974 to 1983.
Former President Carter, a Democrat, has said that many other Clinton pardons "were quite questionable, including about 40 not recommended by the Justice Department."
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josh.meyer@latimes.com
