http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/06/holder-no-intention-of-stepping-down-165520.html?hp=l4By DYLAN BYERS |
6/5/13 8:00 PM EDT
Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday night that he had "no intention" of stepping down in the wake of scrutiny over Justice Dept. leak investigations, though he left the door open for a possible exit before the end of President Obama's second term.
"There's some things that I want to do, some things I want to get done. I've discussed that with the President," Holder told NBC News correspondent Pete Williams in an exclusive interview. "Once I have finished that, I'll sit down with him and we'll determine when it's time to make a transition to a new attorney general."
"But to be clear, you're not stepping down now?" Williams asked.
"No, I have no intention of doing so now."
Elsewhere in the interview, Holder expressed concern that the Justice Department's guidelines for monitoring reporters in national security investigations had "gotten a little out of whack."
"I think we can do a better job than we have," he said. "We can reform those regulations, reform those guidelines to better reflect that balance."
Wednesday's interview was Holder's first since he and other Justice Department officials sat down with some of Washington's top editors and bureau chiefs for an off-the-record meeting about revisions to the department guidelines. The Department has come under heavy scrutiny following revelations that it subpoenaed phone records of Associated Press reporters and monitored the activity of Fox News reporter James Rosen, who was labeled in court documents as "at the very least, an aider or abettor or co-conspirator" in a criminal investigation.
"I don't like that, because it means that me as a government official, and who has great respect for the press, is in essence saying that the reporter who is doing his or her job, and doing that very important job, is somehow branded a criminal," Holder said of the claims against Rosen. "I'm just not comfortable with that. And we're going to change it."
