Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s return this week to a high-level position at Covington & Burling, a corporate law firm that represents big banks, has some calling it a dramatic and troubling example of the Washington-to-Wall-Street revolving door.
That’s because Holder’s six years of service under the administration of President Barack Obama were defined by his refusal to criminally prosecute any of the financial institutions that drove the 2008 financial meltdown and subsequent recession.
“If we had a more aggressive media, this would be an enormous scandal, more than the decamping of former Obama Administration officials to places like Uber and Amazon,” wrote David Dayen in Salon on Tuesday. “That’s because practically no law firm has done more to protect Wall Street executives from the consequences of their criminal activities than Covington & Burling.”
Holder also did a great deal to protect big banks during his tenure at the Department of Justice.
As journalist Lee Fang pointed out in the Intercept on Monday, “The Department of Justice under Holder not only failed to pursue criminal prosecutions of the banks responsible for the mortage meltdown, but in fact de-prioritized investigations of mortgage fraud, making it the ‘lowest-ranked criminal threat,’ according to an inspector general report.”
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