AG Holder Released From Hospital After Health Scare

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was discharged from a Washington hospital where he was taken earlier today after feeling faint and experiencing shortness of breath, the Justice Department said.

Holder left MedStar Washington Hospital Center at 1:15 p.m. and is resting at home, Emily Pierce, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said.

Holder, 63, who has served as Attorney General since 2009, began feeling sick during a daily staff meeting between 9:15 and 9:30 a.m., the department said in a statement. He never lost consciousness and walked out of the meeting before being taken by by ambulance to the hospital.

The hospital visit was “a precaution,” according to the statement, which didn’t give a cause for Holder falling ill.

Holder is an original member of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet and was sworn in on Feb. 3, 2009. The nation’s first black attorney general has been the Obama administration’s point man on issues of racial equality. One of his major efforts has been to reduce prison crowding and to seek changes in laws that disproportionately affect minorities, including reducing the comparatively stiff sentences for crack cocaine versus regular cocaine.

Holder battled the Republican-controlled House over his role in overseeing a botched attempt to track gun smuggling called Fast and Furious. The House held Holder in contempt of Congress in 2012.