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More than 300,000 people have signed a petition calling on the Obama administration to "repudiate" Attorney General Eric Holder's remarks suggesting some banks are "too big to jail."
April 2 -
Attorney General Eric Holder's stunning admission that it was difficult to prosecute large banks because of the potential economic impact adds significant ammunition to those seeking to break up such institutions.
March 6 -
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that a bank's size can make it difficult to prosecute, adding significant weight to critics' concerns that some institutions are "too big to jail."
March 6
WASHINGTON Attorney General Eric Holder tried on Wednesday to walk back earlier comments that some financial institutions are "too big to jail."
"Let me be very clear, there's no bank, there's no institution, there's no individual that cannot be prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice," he told lawmakers during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. "We have had thousands of financially based cases over the last four years."
The remarks came after his now-famous March testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in which he explained to lawmakers that the size of some banks can
At the time, Holder expressed concern that "the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute if we do bring a criminal charge it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy."
Those comments set off renewed debate in Washington over whether some institutions should be downsized, and raised serious questions about the fairness of the judicial system.
Holder also said at Wednesday's hearing that his earlier comments have been "misconstrued."
But it's uncertain why Holder waited until May to publicly clarify his earlier statements, given how frequently they've been cited by lawmakers, advocates and the media, or what exactly was misconstrued.
It's not even clear that his comments in front of the House panel are at odds with his earlier statements in the Senate. Asserting that all financial institutions can be prosecuted by the Justice Department doesn't necessarily diminish the fact that such cases may be harder to bring.
