US Attorney General Eric Holder is reportedly staying on in his position for at least another year past President Barack Obama’s first term, according to Fox News.
Barack Obama had previously asked Eric Holder to continue in his role beyond January and Holder accepted his request, but they did not specify a timeline, the Wall Street Journal had reported earlier.
There was some uncertainty as to whether Eric Holder would stay on in the administration after he told a college audience in Baltimore earlier this month that he had not made up his mind on the matter.
“Do I think that there are things that I still want to do? Do I have some gas left in the tank?” Eric Holder mused.
Eric Holder was under fire last week as questions emerged over why he did not tell Barack Obama that ex-CIA Director David Petraeus was having an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell.
He was told by the FBI that they were investigating the relationship between the director of the CIA and Paula Broadwell in late summer, but he appears not to have shared the information with anyone else.
Barack Obama did not find out about the scandal until after the election, just two days before David Petraeus resigned, even though senior officials had apparently been aware of it for months.
Eric Holder was also under fire in July, when the Republican-controlled House of Representatives charged him with contempt of Congress over the “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal.
The charges were a reaction to Eric Holder’s refusal to turn over to lawmakers all of the Justice Department documents they demanded on the botched gun-tracking operation.
Republicans questioned how much the Justice Department – and the White House – knew about the operation, which allowed U.S. guns to be moved into Mexico in hopes of tracking them to drug traffickers.
The operation backfired when at least one of those guns was used to kill a U.S. Border Patrol agent in 2010.
The White House denied any involvement in the program.
