Through his spokesperson Adam Jentleson, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat, expressed his confidence Wednesday evening in Attorney General Eric Holder, in the wake of Operation Fast and Furious.
Reid’s statement supporting Holder comes on the heels of statements from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz supporting the attorney general.
Rather than answer a press request from The Daily Caller, however, Jentleson sent an unsolicited email to BuzzFeed.com editor Ben Smith.
Jentleson did not immediately respond to a request asking why he chose to provide his answer to TheDC’s question to another publication, but it may have been related to DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse’s decision to leak TheDC’s emailed questions on the same subject to BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post.
Woodhouse ignored TheDC’s press request for several days before TheDC gave him a deadline of 10 a.m. Thursday for an answer. Rather than answering, Woodhouse leaked the emails to other journalists.
The DNC accused TheDC of “blackmail” for saying it would report on Wasserman Schultz’s failure to support Holder if Woodhouse ignored the deadline and did not answer the question.
The first media outlet to have reported the DNC’s political attacks on TheDC was BuzzFeed. (RELATED: Full coverage of Operation Fast and Furious)
“Ben — I saw your piece about the Daily Caller,” Jentleson wrote in an unsolicited email to Smith. “We received a similar inquiry, although no ultimatum yet.”
“In case you were curious, Senator Reid continues to have confidence in Attorney General Holder,” Jentleson added.
Support for the embattled Holder from Reid, Pelosi and Wasserman Schultz comes as 121 U.S. House members, three senators, two sitting governors and all GOP presidential candidates have called for his resignation over Operation Fast and Furious. All of them are Republicans.
Oklahoma Democratic Rep. Dan Boren recently became the first Democrat to decline to defend Holder. His spokesman told TheDC the congressman had “no comment” when asked whether he still had confidence in Holder as attorney general.