Excerpt:
Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed Tuesday that on his watch the Justice Department decided not to prosecute a key leader of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. However, confirming a report last week on this blog — Holder noted that Bush-era officials also made an earlier decision not to proceed with the case.
"The decision that was reached in this administration was the same that was reached in the Bush administration — a determination made that for a variety of reasons, looking at the facts and the law, a prosecution would not be appropriate. A review was done of that decision in this administration and the conclusion was reached that that earlier decision was an appropriate one," Holder said in response to a question at a wide-ranging briefing for reporters.
Holder said the "decision wasn't necessarily about CAIR as it was about a guy, an individual." The attorney general did not name the person in question. However, in a letter to Holder earlier this month, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King (R-N.Y.) said the decision pertained to CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad and came over the objection of Dallas-based federal prosecutors handling the investigation.