Attorney General Eric Holder defended Debo Adegbile, whose nomination to lead the Justice Department‘s civil rights division failed in the Senate on Wednesday because of his work on behalf of a convicted cop-killer, saying that lawmakers who voted no “misunderstood” his record.

“He deserved to have his nomination considered wholly on the merits. His record was either misunderstood, or intentionally misrepresented for the sake of politics,” Holder said of Adegbile after seven Democrats joined all Senate Republicans to block his nomination. “Our legal system hinges on the fundamental ideal that every accused individual has a constitutional right to counsel. It is a very dangerous precedent to set for the legal profession when individual lawyers can have their otherwise sterling qualifications denigrated based solely on the clients that their organizations represent.”