It amazes me that the so-called "progressive" blogosphere is willing to throw the Governor of Illinois under the bus because of information contained on selected portions of wiretaps. Now the same group is criticizing Republicans for wishing to examine AG nominee Eric Holder. The Republicans are right but for the wrong reason.
The nominee is infamous for the Holder-Thompson-McNulty doctrine, which holds that corporations must throw their employees under the bus in order to avoid indictment of the corporation itself.
The Second Circuit in the recent case of U.S. v. Stein actually dismissed an indictment (and thus the charges) because this doctrine effectively denies counsel to the accused in a criminal case.
The doctrine comes into play when a corporation and its employees are suspected of criminal wrongdoing. The Justice Department then goes to the corporation and tells the powers that be that the corporation will not be indicted if the Department of Justice decides that the corporation is being co-operative. The DOJ's definition of "co-operation" includes denying any support for "culpable" employees and retaining employees "without sanction for their misconduct." The definitions of "culpable" and "misconduct" are left to the discretion of the DOJ in each particular case.
The DOJ will regard a corporation as being unco-operative whenever the corporation is advancing attorney fees to the employee. (Note that the corporation is advancing fees, not paying them outright. It's a sort of loan, though if the person is acquitted, the loan is forgiven.)
The effect of this doctrine is to take away competent counsel. While Public Defenders certainly do a yeomanlike job and, at the Federal level, are excellent attorneys, they are often not prepared for complex business and tax cases.
As one who defends those accused of crime on a regular basis, I can tell you that the picture painted by law enforcement at the beginning of a case is rarely accurate. The initial reports from law enforcement are put together with the specific purpose of convincing a grand jury to indict and convincing lazy defense counsel to capitulate.
That Eric Holder was the one who began this process of denying counsel to the accused makes him unfit, in my view, to serve at any level in the Department of Justice.