Holder adds Blago link to his confirmation papers

Eric Holder -- President-elect Barack Obama's pick to head the Justice Department -- has amended his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation paperwork to include a tie to Gov. Blagojevich.

That follows a report Dec. 17 in the Chicago Sun-Times disclosing that Holder had left out the fact that Blagojevich planned to appoint him in 2004 as a special investigator to the Illinois Gaming Board and that Holder had made a public appearance with the governor regarding that effort.

On Dec. 19, Holder filed "supplemental responses . . . to the Committee's questionnaire relating to my nomination as Attorney General."

That 20-page document includes Holder's March 24, 2004, news conference with the "Governor of Illinois regarding my potential engagement to conduct an independent investigation into allegations of the possible influence of organized crime on the awarding of a casino license."

Blagojevich scrapped plans for the casino probe May 18, 2004. So Holder never was formally hired or paid. But Gaming Board staffers questioned Holder's involvement at the time, saying they feared Blagojevich was trying to steer the casino selection to Rosemont.

Holder's "supplemental responses" also included hundreds of other minor additions and clarifications to his employment record, "honors and awards," speaking appearances, media interviews and other press conferences.

The omissions were inadvertent, Obama transition spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter has said: "Eric Holder has given hundreds of press interviews over his long career. He did his best to report them all to the committee, but as he noted in the questionnaire itself, some were undoubtedly missed in the effort to reconstruct a list of them. The 2004 press conference [with Blagojevich] was not memorable because Holder's legal work for the State of Illinois never materialized."