President Bush nominated Michael Mukasey to be attorney general Monday, a day after the retired federal judge met with conservatives to assure them he was in their corner.
In picking Mukasey, Bush bypassed former Solicitor General Ted Olson, the preferred candidate of some conservatives. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had pre-emptively threatened to block a nomination of Olson, who successfully argued the landmark Bush vs. Gore case before the Supreme Court in 2000.
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“I’m glad President Bush listened to Congress and put aside his plan to replace Alberto Gonzales with another partisan administration insider,” Reid said Monday.
A senior administration official would not answer questions from The Examiner about whether Olson was a candidate for the job, but noted that “avoiding any big confirmation battle certainly helps with the legislative agenda.”
The official said Mukasey “was not as well-known in conservative circles in Washington,” so he met with activists who questioned him about terrorism and other “issues that were of concern to those groups.”
Bush emphasized Mukasey’s national-security credentials, noting that he presided over the trial of the “blind sheikh” and other terrorists who conspired to destroy the World Trade Center and other New York landmarks in 1993.
“Judge Mukasey is clear-eyed about the threat our nation faces,” Bush told reporters in the Rose Garden. “He knows what it takes to fight this war effectively, and he knows how to do it in a manner that is consistent with our laws and our Constitution.”
Mukasey, 66, who retired last year from the federal bench inNew York, served in the Justice Department 35 years ago as an assistant U.S. attorney.
“The challenges the department faces are vastly different,” he said Monday. “Thirty-five years ago, our foreign adversaries saw widespread devastation as a deterrent; today, our fanatical enemies see it as a divine fulfillment.”
Mukasey seemed on course for a relatively easy confirmation by the Senate, but Democrats tempered their praise of Bush’s choice with veiled warnings that they could hold up his nomination in order to force the White House to turn over documents they had been seeking on the firing of federal prosecutors and on the terrorist surveillance program.
“Our focus now will be on securing the relevant information we need so we can proceed to schedule fair and thorough hearings,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. “Cooperation from the White House will be essential in determining that schedule.”
