Holder leaves door wide open to White House run

"We'll see," he said when asked directly if he might run for president at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.

His comment came as he rolled out a list of targets for his National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a Barack Obama-backed group that plans to spend $30 million this year in hopes of flipping GOP-held governor's offices and state legislative chambers.

"You know, I'll see. I'm focused on NDRC at this point. I think I'll make a decision by the end of the year about whether there's another chapter," Holder said.

The former attorney general also warned of "long-term negative collateral consequences" of President Donald Trump's feud with the FBI, the Justice Department and the intelligence community.

At the breakfast, he called special counsel Robert Mueller "a strong guy" and said the Russia investigation will be completed.

The bigger problem, he said, could come months or years down the line, if FBI agents' credibility is eroded in the eyes of ordinary Americans who sit on juries and decide whether law enforcement officials or defendants are telling the truth -- in situations where there's an "FBI agent saying one thing and defendant saying something else."

Trump and the GOP's attacks could "raise questions in a layperson's head about the way the FBI is doing its job," he said.

"I would hope that the President would rethink the way in which he has attacked career people at the FBI, career people in the Justice Department, career people in our intelligence community, and think about ways in which he has spoken about his attorney general," Holder said.