Despite conflicts of interest on the issue of abortion, pro-abortion Attorney General Eric Holder will keep his position.
President Barack Obama has reportedly asked his controversial attorney general to stay for the second term, and Holder has agreed despite enduring a firestorm of criticism pro-life advocates.
Just before the election, Human Events broke the news that Holder’s wife and sister-in-law co-own, through a family trust, the building where a controversial abortion practitioner operates. The Holder family transferred ownership to a family trust in 2009, eight months after President Barack Obama’s inauguration and a deed names Holder’s wife and sister-in-law as trustees.
Fulton County tax records show Holder’s wife and sister-in-law own the building, located at 6210 Old National Highway, College Park, Ga. A statement from the Georgia Department of Law shows the building was home to Old National Gynecology, the practice of abortion practitioner Tyrone Cecil Malloy.
Later, Human Events revealed Holder failed to disclose his wife’s ownership of the building. The attorney general’s financial disclosure reports for 2008 through 2011 show Holder neglected to report his wife’s co-ownership.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch in Washington, D.C., said he was “surprised there is this trust out there and (Holder) hasn’t reported it.”
“It looks to me like the sort of thing that should be disclosed. If he and his spouse are gaining income off this trust, generally that would be subject to disclosure,” Fitton said. “I mean, if you have an ownership interest, you get the income. You may not be making the day-to-day decisions about the investments, but you are certainly benefiting from them.”
Holder did not respond to several requests for comment.
Dana Cody, an attorney and the president and executive director of Life Legal Defense Foundation, a pro-life legal defense organization in Napa, Calif., agreed that Holder should have “disclosed any financial interest he had in the abortion industry.”
Under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, high-level federal officials are required to “disclose publicly their personal financial interests to ensure confidence in the integrity of the federal government by demonstrating that they are able to carry out their duties without compromising the public trust.”
The law further requires disclosure of the “holdings of and income from the holdings of any trust, estate, investment fund or other financial arrangement from which income is received by, or with respect to which a beneficial interest in principal or income is held by, the filer, his spouse, or dependent child.”
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Those found violating the law can face penalties ranging from criminal and civil fines to imprisonment, according to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. This includes fines of up to $50,000 and a maximum of a year imprisonment, if the non-disclosure was done willfully, according to the Office of Government Ethics.
Interestingly, though he did not disclose his connection to the abortion practice, Holder did disclose his wife’s ownership of a D.C.-area medical practice and her pension.
Holder has failed to prosecute abortion practitioners who run afoul of federal laws and some say the connection helps explain why he has been eager to prosecute pro-life advocates who protest outside of abortion centers.
About the abortion practitioner that works at the Holder-owned abortion clinic, LifeNews reported in December 2011 that Malloy faces accusations of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in Medicaid payments that were fraudulent.
Tyrone Malloy and his abortion facility office manager were arrested, according to a spokesman for the office of the Georgia Attorney General. Malloy and office manager CathyAnn Warner reportedly took in more than $380,000 in payments for pre-abortion ultrasounds Malloy never did and abortions that did not qualify for reimbursement under Medicaid.
Malloy and Warner were indicted by a grand jury on two counts of Medicaid fraud and, if they are convicted, they face 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. After his arrest, Malloy posted bond. Federal rules allow for Medicaid funding for abortions only if they are done in the very rare cases such as saving the life of the mother or rape or incest.
