Health scare figures in Holder’s decision to leave Justice Dept.

The Holder file . . .

Sneed is told that Attorney General Eric Holder, who has announced he is pulling the plug on his White House career, decided to finally do so over the Labor Day holidays.

Although it has been reported that Holder, who is this/close to President Barack Obama and his chief White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, now wants to get involved in justice issues involving minorities, Sneed is told he faced a major stop sign in late February, when he was taken to a hospital in Washington, D.C., after experiencing an elevated heart rate and shortness of breath.

◆ Backshot: Journalists have been conducting a job watch since last year on Holder, who has been the center of several hot-button scandals involving a botched gun-trafficking operation, the IRS and the seizure of AP reporters’ phone records.

Stay tuned.

Vatican whispers . . .

Sneed hears Pope Francis personally made phone calls checking out the credentials of new Chicago Archbishop-elect Blase Cupich.

“In other words, he did his own research, rather than rely solely on the Papal Nuncio in the U.S.,” a top Sneed source said.

Good grief!!!!

Sneed is told Cook County employees are still furious over what seems to have been a complete breakdown of electronic communications in county government.

It’s now Day 11 of issues with Cook County servers, and employees of various county offices unable to send or receive email. Email communications were originally shut down at noon Sept. 10 for nearly 7,000 county employees — and continued to be unusable the next day — the anniversary of the Sept. 11 twin towers terrorist attack.

◆ Backshot: Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle vowed that employees would notice major improvements when she appointed Simona Rollinson as the new IT director in April and boasted of “more than $40 million in strategic technology investments” made under her leadership.

◆ Buckshot: More than four months after Rollinson’s appointment, however, the email glitches are all anyone is talking about.

“We had no email access at all for seven days,” one county employee said.

“Now, it’s hit and miss on what we get or don’t get. I’ve never seen anything like it. Even when email was restored, all old messages, calendars, contacts, etc. weren’t,” the source added.

◆ Past shot: Preckwinkle’s sudden dumping of Lydia Murray as county IT director in December — just days after she was roundly praised for innovations during her presentation at the City Club of Chicago — stunned Murray’s admirers.

◆ The flipside: “We understand that the email issues . . . have been extremely challenging and we want to thank all Cook County employees for their patience,” stated an email dispatched recently by the Cook County Bureau of Technology, which claims to be working “diligently with our outside vendors to come to a complete resolution of the situation as quickly as possible.”

CONTINUE READING AT SUNTIMES.COM