My colleague Zack at TPMmuck just heard from an aide to Attorney General nominee Eric Holder. The aide definitively denied Sen. Kit Bond’s (R-MO) claim that Holder had given him “assurances” of avoiding future prosecutions of Bush intelligence officials who engaged in torturous interrogations.
“Eric Holder has not made any commitments about who would or would not be prosecuted,” the aide said via e-mail. “He explained his position to Senator Bond as he did in the public hearing and in his responses to written questions.”
The aide pointed to Holder’s written response to a question from Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ):
Prosecutorial and investigative judgments must depend on the facts, and no one is above the law. But where it is clear that a government agent has acted in “reasonable and good-faith reliance on Justice Department legal opinions” authoritatively permitting his conduct, I would find it difficult to justify commencing a full-blown criminal investigation, let alone a prosecution.
