Eric Holder: Jeff Sessions has been 'racially insensitive,' 'racially unaware'
/Former Attorney General Eric Holder said Attorney General Jeff Sessions is “racially insensitive” and has been “racially unaware” at times in his career.
In an interview with Politico’s “Off Message” podcast, Holder was asked if he agrees with accusations from some Democrats, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., that Sessions has made racist comments.
“I don’t like to use that term unless you’ve got really hard and fast proof, but I think he’s done some things in his career and as attorney general that I think have been racially insensitive, and there are times when I think he’s racially unaware,” Holder said.
The former attorney general pointed specifically to Sessions’ reversal of a memo Holder issued in 2013, when he was President Obama's attorney general, that urged prosecutors to avoid mandatory minimum sentences in some low-level drug cases.
In May, Sessions issued his own memo directing federal prosecutors to seek the maximum punishments for crimes. But Holder said that by rolling back the “Holder Memo,” Sessions failed to understand the impact his new policy would have on specific communities.
“When you understand that the prior policy that I reversed had a particularly negative impact on people of color, to go back to those failed policies I think necessarily means that you’re going to have that same impact,” Holder said. “I think that shows a certain degree of racial unawareness, because if you’re aware of that, if you’re aware of the impact there, I think you’d have to think long and hard about reinstituting that which we showed did not work nearly as well as the things we’ve put in place.”
The former attorney general recalled his own experiences when he was tapped by Obama to serve in the role, and said he met with former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who led the Justice Department under former President George W. Bush.
Holder said he was never asked to meet with Sessions, but contended that Sessions may have met with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who succeeded Holder in the Obama administration.
