President Barack Obama on Thursday gave a firm vote of confidence to embattled Attorney General Eric Holder.
“I have complete confidence in Eric Holder as attorney general,” Obama said at a joint afternoon press conference with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “He does his job with integrity and I expect he will continue to do so.”
Holder has come under fire for the Department of Justice’s subpoena of Associated Press phone records, with even some on the left calling for his sacking.
But Obama defended the probe earlier in the press conference, emphasizing the need to get to the bottom of leaks. Earlier this week, Holder called the leak on a CIA operation in Yemen, the impetus for the seizure of the AP’s phone records, one of the most serious in his career.
“You know, leaks related to national security can put people at risk,” Obama said. “It can put men and women in uniform that I’ve sent into the battlefield at risk. They can put some of our intelligence officers who are in various dangerous situations that are easily compromised at risk.”
