Senate Republicans’ plan to quickly take up President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions to be attorney general and possibly confirm him by Inauguration Day has Democrats crying foul.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday that Republicans hope to confirm a number of the president’s Cabinet selections by Jan. 20, although he didn’t say which nominees. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley also said he plans to move rapidly to hold hearings on Sessions’ nomination before Trump is sworn in.
That news surprised Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the incoming top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, the panel charged with holding hearings and evaluating Sessions’ qualifications for the role of the nation’s top law enforcer.
Asked if she was “on board” withholding Sessions’ hearing before the inauguration, Feinstein said she doubted the panel could move that quickly. “I don’t know that we can,” she said.
As the incoming ranking member, Feinstein said she would have to wait to hire staff until she officially takes the lead Democratic role on the Committee in early January.
“I don’t know that all the due diligence can be done [by then],” she said. “I don’t become ranking member until next year, and so I won’t have the staff when we go [into session in early January].”
“…We need the staff to do some of this work and I’m a little bit surprised, but I want to talk to Sen. Grassley,” she said.
“I have concerns,” she told added. “The president has referred to him as his attorney general. There’s no such thing as a president’s attorney general. You’re attorney general on behalf of the people, not the president.”
Earlier in the day, Grassley said he wanted to make sure that the confirmation hearing for Sessions proceeds smoothly and said he won’t tolerate any attacks on Sessions’ character, which he said liberal groups are “clearly hoping for.”
Democrats changed the filibuster rules in 2013 to allow confirmation of a president’s nominations by a simple majority vote for all but Supreme Court picks, so there’s little they can do to stop Sessions or any other Trump Cabinet choice.
Still, Democrats have signaled they won’t give Sessions a pass and will undoubtedly dig into his past, including racist allegations that cost him a Senate confirmation for a federal judgeship in the 1980s.
Neither Feinstein nor Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the outgoing top Democrat on the panel, would rule out plans to call witnesses who made the racist accusations against Sessions from the hearing that sunk his judgeship confirmation three decades ago.
Leahy told the Examiner that he wouldn’t broadcast Democrats’ plans for the hearing this far ahead.
But committee Democrats sent a letter to Grassley on Monday pressing him to ensure that Sessions hearings are “fair and thorough.”
“We all have personal and cordial relationships with Senator Sessions and know him to be a strong advocate for his political positions,” they wrote. “But as you know, his job as attorney general, if he is confirmed, will be different: He will have to be an independent attorney general who is willing to set aside personal beliefs and political positions in service of larger obligations.”
The Democrats also questioned if Sessions was the right man to lead the agency charged with securing and protecting the constitutional and civil rights of all Americans especially when “we see hate crimes on the rise nationwide and many people becoming more and more fearful of what the incoming administration will mean for them and their families.”
Specifically, the Democrats asked Grassley to provide at least four days of hearings for Sessions’ nomination, citing the four days it took for the same committee to consider the nomination of then-Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., to serve as attorney general during the George W. Bush administration.
