Holder failed to mention work for Ill. gov

CHICAGO, Dec. 17 (UPI) -- U.S. Attorney General-designate Eric Holder failed to mention legal work he did for embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich in disclosures, observers said.

Blagojevich and Holder appeared together in 2004 to announce Holder's role as "special investigator to the Illinois Gaming Board," an effort to sort out a mess involving Illinois' unawarded casino license. But the job, for which Holder's law firm was to be paid $300,000, was not mentioned in a 47-page response to a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Wednesday.

"Eric Holder has given hundreds of press interviews," Obama transition spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter told the Sun-Times in a statement. "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."

Holder and Blagojevich appeared together in 2004 because of a controversial Illinois Gaming Board vote that month to allow a casino to be built in suburban Chicago. The vote defied the recommendation of the board's staff, which had raised concerns about alleged organized crime links to the casino's developer, the newspaper said.

Holder was tapped to do an investigation, but idea was later dropped.