Former attorney general says Trump commission is led by a ‘fact-challenged zealot’

Eric Holder didn’t mince words this week talking about President Donald Trump’s new election integrity commission.

According to Politico, Holder said the commission is led by a “fact-challenged zealot,” during a speech Monday to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is vice-chairman of the commission and has largely been the public face of the group since Trump created it. Vice President Mike Pence also serves as the chairman of the group.

Holder, the former attorney general in President Barack Obama’s administration, added that “too many in this country are trying to make it too hard, to make it too difficult for the people.”

“This commission, led by a fact-challenged zealot, will come up with bogus reasons why further restrictions should be placed on the right to vote,” Holder said, per Politico. “This commission is up to no good.”

Both Trump and Kobach have claimed widespread voter fraud played a significant role in the 2016 general election. But neither has provided firm or substantial evidence to prove their claims.

In a phone interview, Kobach criticized Holder’s tenure as attorney general.

“I’m simply going where the facts clearly lead,” Kobach said. “And in Kansas there is abundant evidence of voting by non-citizens and double voting and we have been prosecuting those cases....and we had very little help, well we had no help from the Holder justice department.”

Kobach, who was given the power to prosecute voter fraud in 2015, has secured nine voting fraud convictions.

As of this March, Kansas had close to 1.8 million registered voters.

“For Holder to suggest a prosecuting agency doing its duty is zealotry suggests that he viewed the Department of Justice as an agency that could pick and choose what to prosecute,” Kobach said.

This story was originally published July 25, 2017 at 6:20 PM with the headline "Former attorney general says Trump commission is led by a ‘fact-challenged zealot’."