The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
Before Eric Holder was President-elect Barack Obama's choice to be attorney general, he was Gov. Blagojevich's pick to sort out a mess involving Illinois' long-dormant casino license.There's more:
Blagojevich and Holder appeared together at a March 24, 2004, news conference to announce Holder's role as "special investigator to the Illinois Gaming Board" -- a post that was to pay Holder and his Washington, D.C. law firm up to $300,000.
Holder, however, omitted that event from his 47-page response to a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire made public this week -- an oversight he plans to correct after a Chicago Sun-Times inquiry, Obama's transition team indicated late Tuesday.
In an interview Tuesday, the Gaming Board's chief investigator in 2004 said the timing of Blagojevich's appointment of Holder raised the staff's suspicions.For more on the infamous Rosemont Casino situation which Eric Holder forgot about.We wonder if Eric Holder has heard of Chicago Mob Boss John "No Nose" DiFronzo's name mentioned in relation to that Rosemont Casino? No word yet from Rod Blagojevich on this one.
"The concern was Holder had a bias to do whatever Blagojevich wanted, which was to give the casino to Rosemont," said Jim Wagner, who was a top Chicago FBI agent before he joined the Gaming Board, from which he retired in December 2005. "We all believed the only reason Holder was coming in was to fashion an investigation that would manipulate the casino into Rosemont."
Wagner also said the matter should be explored by the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It ought be brought up and vetted totally as to what motivated him to leave it off" the questionnaire, Wagner said.
