Alabama’s Jeff Sessions, once the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement today that he opposes the nomination of Loretta Lynch for attorney general. Sessions cited Lynch’s answers in Thursday’s nomination hearing to his questions about President Obama’s executive action on immigration. Here’s an excerpt from Sessions’s statement:
“President Obama’s executive amnesty represents one of the most breathtaking exertions of executive power in the history of this country. After Congress rejected the President’s favored immigration legislation, the White House met with the interest groups who had crafted that bill and implemented the major provisions of the legislation that Congress had rejected through executive fiat.
The legal opinion attempting to justify this circumvention of Congress was issued by the Attorney General’s Office of Legal Counsel. At the outset of this nomination process, I said that no Senator should vote to confirm anyone for this position—the top law enforcement job in America—who supported the President’s unlawful actions. Congress must defend its constitutional role, which is clearly threatened.
Unfortunately, when asked today whether she found the President’s actions to be ‘legal and constitutional,’ Ms. Lynch said that she did. I therefore am unable to support her nomination.
My concerns are furthered by Ms. Lynch’s unambiguous declaration that ‘the right and the obligation to work is one that’s shared by everyone in this country regardless of how they came here. And certainly, if someone is here, regardless of status, I would prefer that they would be participating in the workplace than not participating in the workplace.’
The legal opinion attempting to justify this circumvention of Congress was issued by the Attorney General’s Office of Legal Counsel. At the outset of this nomination process, I said that no Senator should vote to confirm anyone for this position—the top law enforcement job in America—who supported the President’s unlawful actions. Congress must defend its constitutional role, which is clearly threatened.
Unfortunately, when asked today whether she found the President’s actions to be ‘legal and constitutional,’ Ms. Lynch said that she did. I therefore am unable to support her nomination.
My concerns are furthered by Ms. Lynch’s unambiguous declaration that ‘the right and the obligation to work is one that’s shared by everyone in this country regardless of how they came here. And certainly, if someone is here, regardless of status, I would prefer that they would be participating in the workplace than not participating in the workplace.’
Watch the video of the exchange between Sessions and Lynch below:
