Word: starrs
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...lawyers believed Holder made the right call legally - he had no real choice, given the facts presented by Starr's deputies. But Clinton aides were livid. After years of strained relations with Reno and the six independent-counsel probes she had initiated, Holder had been viewed as someone they could deal with. The deputy had successfully urged Reno not to launch a seventh probe into questionable fundraising practices by Clinton in his 1996 re-election campaign, resisting pressure from Congress and DOJ career lawyers. Holder, in fact, looked like he was being groomed for the top job if Reno decided...
...deputy AG acted more subtly in February after Clinton lawyer David Kendall charged that Starr's office had leaked grand-jury information. When Starr announced plans for an internal investigation of the leaks, Holder advised him to stand down until the federal judge overseeing the case found merit in the complaint. But at the same time, Holder quietly called the judge and offered the DOJ's help in pending issues raised by the President's lawyers, which included the leaks question. When Starr learned about the unusual intervention, he saw it as a betrayal. (Holder has denied that he "ever...
...From the outset, Clinton's lawyers sought to discredit the Lewinsky investigation as a witch hunt by right-wing lawyers headed by Starr, who, while not politically active, was a conservative Republican. Holder never publicly endorsed that view but fanned it by drawing public attention to similar allegations in the Whitewater case: a prosecution witness had supposedly received payments by anti-Clinton philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife to discredit the President. In April, Holder wrote to Starr, urging him to look into the matter, and then released the letter to the press. The accusation rested on shaky stories by questionable sources...
...Although Holder did not subscribe to the devil theories of Clinton's lawyers, he questioned whether Starr's deputies had manipulated him into approving the Lewinsky probe. As his view of the case darkened, so did his relationship with Bennett, a decorated career prosecutor who had worked with Holder at the DOJ when they were young lawyers and played pickup basketball together. Bennett had come to believe his old friend was undermining the investigation. The mutual bitterness came to a head at a March 20 meeting in Holder's office...
...Bennett complained angrily that after authorizing Starr's office to investigate the Lewinsky case, Holder's department had done nothing to defend the prosecutors, including longtime assistant U.S. Attorneys on loan to Starr's office, from harsh personal and professional attacks by Clinton's lawyers...