Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert seems to believe that the United States attorney general is siding with terrorists.
The Texas lawmaker, not exactly known for his rhetorical restraint, made the suggestion on conservative shock jock Glenn Beck’s radio show on Tuesday, arguing that Eric Holder allowed a federal magistrate to read Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights because Holder is sympathetic to terrorists.
After a dramatic, day-long manhunt earlier this month, Tsarnaev underwent 16 hours of questioning before he was advised of his constitutional rights to silence and a lawyer. Federal authorities invoked an exception to the Miranda Rights, which can be enacted when public safety may be threatened.
“Think about it, when your attorney general spent more of his legal career helping terrorists than defending the country, then you know we all have certain biases and lean certain ways,” Gohmert said. The audio was first posted on Think Progress.
Before working in the Obama administration, Holder was an attorney at Covington & Burling in Washington D.C. His clients included big corporations, such as Merck and the National Football League. He also defended global banana producer Chiquita in a case that had to do with the company’s payment of protection money to a group that was on the U.S. government’s list of terrorist organizations. Gohmert did not go into detail about Holder, but this latter episode may have been what Gohmert was referring to.
The firm also defended some Guantanamo detainees, but Holder was not involved. Gohmert didn’t stop at just baselessly accusing Holder. He also repeated previous claims that the Obama Administration is being advised by the Muslim Brotherhood. He said of Obama administration officials, “they either lie under oath or they do know the extent of the Muslim Brotherhood infiltration into our government.”Recommended
