Facing scrutiny from Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee, moments ago Attorney General Eric Holder punted on responsibility for the subpoena of two months of phone records from Associated Press employees by the Department of Justice.
Pressed on who was responsible for signing off on the subpoena, his answer was, “I don’t know” and “I’m simply not a part of that case.”
The subpoena of records should have been approved by Holder according to DOJ rules, but Holder was recused from the case. After saying he assumed that deputy Attorney General James Cole signed off on the subpoena, he added, “I was just handed a note that we’ve just confirmed that the deputy was the one who authorized the subpoena.”
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) attacked him on issues of responsibility, saying, “There doesn’t seem to be any acceptance of repsonsibility for things that have gone wrong.” He instructed Holder and other senior DOJ employees to go to the Truman libary and take a picture of the famed “The buck stops here” sign. “We don’t know where the buck stops and i think to do adequate oversight we better find out,” said Sensenbrenner.
Holder remained vague on other issues, including the investigation of the September 11 attack in Benghazi. When asked about the status of the investigation by Rep. Howard Coble (R-NC), Holder said, “I can’t be definitive other than to say that the investigation is ongoing, that we are at a point that we have taken steps that I would say are definitive, concrete.”
