Attorney General Eric Holder was released from a Washington hospital and sent home Thursday after falling ill at Justice Department headquarters earlier in the day, according to a department official.
“During his regular morning meeting with senior staff, the attorney general began experiencing symptoms including faintness and shortness of breath,” department spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement.
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“As a precaution, the attorney general was taken to MedStar Washington Hospital Center to undergo further evaluation. He is currently resting comfortably and in good condition. He is alert and conversing with his doctors,” Fallon added.
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Early Thursday afternoon, a senior Justice Department official said Holder was resting at home after being discharged from the hospital at 1:15 P.M.
The attorney general was taken to the hospital by ambulance in the morning, but made the trip at the urging of his security team, the official said.
“It was his detail’s decision to take him to hospital as precaution,” said the official, who asked not to be named. “He joked with paramedics in the ambulance ride.”
President Barack Obama was quickly informed of Holder’s hospitalization, White House press secretary Jay Carney said at a news briefing Thursday afternoon.
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“The president has been made aware,” Carney said in response to reporters’ questions about Holder. “The president was notified and, of course, wishes him a speedy recovery.”
Holder, 63, has been the only person to hold the position of attorney general under President Barack Obama. Holder told friends in 2012 that he was considering leaving his post at the end of that year. However, he later decided to stay on and has said more recently that he plans to stay at least through this year.
Holder has had a tumultuous reign as attorney general, often serving as lightning rod for conservatives angry with the Obama administration. He also faced heat from the White House early on after his plan to try the alleged Sept. 11 plotters in federal court in New York drew attacks from Republicans and Democrats. That effort was eventually abandoned in favor of a military commission trial at Guantanamo Bay, but Holder was in the lurch for more than a year as the White House considered how to proceed.
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Anger toward Holder over a federal gun-running investigation that resulted in as many as 2,000 guns reaching Mexican drug cartel resulted in a pair of House votes in 2012, holding him in contempt for failing to turn over documents related to the Justice Department’s response to the scandal. Obama ultimately backed Holder’s position in the matter by asserting executive privilege over the documents. A judge is currently considering whether the assertion was valid.
Since the flap over Operation Fast and Furious died down, Holder has focused more of his attention on longtime policy interests, appearing unabashed about advancing traditionally liberal positions on issues such as sentencing reform and voting rights. Some of the stances, such as an effort to curtail mandatory minimum sentences, are sharply at odds with positions the Justice Department took when Holder served as deputy attorney general in the 1990s under President Bill Clinton.
Holder is a regular basketball player and played briefly on Columbia University’s basketball team as an undergraduate. He often jokes about having better hoops skills than Obama, adjusting for their difference in age.
Holder “walks five flights of stairs every morning to his office and was due to play basketball this weekend,” the Justice official said Thursday afternoon.
While generally in good health, the always slim Holder has sometimes suffered from back problems. After a long Congressional oversight hearing in 2012, he had trouble getting up from his chair and had to seek assistance from aides.
Holder is currently the fifth-longest serving attorney general. If he continues in the post through the end of the year, he would be the third-longest serving attorney general, behind William Wirt, who served for more than 11 years in the early 19th Century, and Janet Reno, who held the job through virtually all of Clinton’s eight years in office.
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