By: Carrie Budoff Brown

Eric Holder, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration and longtime ally to Barack Obama, is under “strong consideration” to be Obama’s attorney general, a Democratic official said Tuesday.

Newsweek reported Tuesday that Obama had decided to tap Holder for the job. But this official said that an offer had neither been made or accepted.

Transition aides also cautioned that a Holder appointment is “not necessarily a done deal.”

But there are abundant signs that Holder is being eyed with intense interest by the Obama team. Transition officials have talked with Senate Republicans about whether they would stall Holder’s confirmation because of his role in the controversial 2001 pardon of fugitive Marc Rich.

There is no evidence that Holder actively supported the pardon, but he was criticized for not alerting the White House to strong objections to it among some Justice Department lawyers and federal prosecutors in New York.

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