Attorney General Eric Holder said that his biggest failure during his time as head of the Justice Department was failing to pass expanded gun control laws and criticized former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta for his negative characterizations of the president during an interview aired on Monday’s broadcast of “The Lead” on CNN.

“I think the inability to pass reasonable gun safety laws after the Newtown massacre is, for me, something that I take personally as a failure, and something that I think we as a society should take as a failure” he stated when asked what he considered his greatest failure.

Holder added that he considered “where we are with regard to our criminal justice reform issues, the stands that we’ve taken against voter suppression efforts, the attempts to include the LGBT community in ways that it has not been before, and to knock down those final vestiges of discrimination” as his biggest successes.

When asked about former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s criticism of President Obama, Holder argued that “the president is a deliberate person in an appropriate way, but he’s also resolute once he makes up his mind. So, I think that what Leon said in the book is unfortunate.”

He further declared, “Frankly, I don’t think it’s something that a former cabinet member should do while the president you served is still in office. That’s not something that I would even consider doing.”

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