.@SenateMajLdr: Eric Holder's comments on Snowden are outrageous. He's one of the worst AGs the U.S. has ever had.https://t.co/dYS46yrxuT
— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) May 31, 2016
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says Eric Holder is among the worst attorneys general in history.
“He was one of the worst attorneys general we’ve ever had,” McConnell said Tuesday on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”
{mosads}”It makes me glad again I voted against confirming him.”
McConnell was lashing out after Holder said National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden “performed a public service” by leaking classified intelligence documents.
“That’s an outrageous comment from a former attorney general,” McConnell said. “Truly outrageous.”
Holder made his comments Monday on the CNN podcast “The Axe Files.”
“We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made,” Holder told David Axelrod.
The former attorney general said Snowden should still face the consequences of breaking the law with his actions, however.
“Now I would say that doing what he did — and the way he did it — was inappropriate and illegal,” he said. “[He] harmed American interests.
“I know there were ways in which certain of our agents were put at risk, relationships with other countries were harmed, our ability to keep the American people safe was compromised.”
Snowden remains exiled in Moscow after leaking classified federal documents in 2013. He has been charged with multiple crimes for the move, including Espionage Act violations that could land him in jail for decades.