William Barr, President Trump’s pick to be the next attorney general, now knows when he’ll face the Senate Judiciary Committee as he seeks to be confirmed to head the Justice Department.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and his incoming replacement Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Wednesday announced that the panel will convene Jan. 15 and 16 to consider Barr’s nomination in a hearing predicted by pundits to be the most controversial since Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared before lawmakers in September.
“The hearings for the five most recent Attorneys General lasted one to two days each. Mr. Barr will receive the same fair and thorough vetting process as the last five nominees to be Attorney General,” the pair said in a statement.
Trump announced last month that Barr would be his permanent choice to replace fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his immediate successor, acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker.
Some Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have already vowed to oppose his candidacy.
“These are not normal times,” Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, told CNN in December. “What’s happening is we have a president who just cares about appointing people who are going to do his bidding, and that is not what we need as an attorney general.”
Barr served as attorney general from 1991-1993 during the late President George H.W. Bush’s administration. His nomination by Trump, however, is not without controversy. Barr, who will take over the role of overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s federal Russia investigation if confirmed by the Senate, once reportedly considered firing special counsel Lawrence Walsh, who was tasked with probing the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s.
Barr in June also specifically criticized Mueller in an unsolicited 20-page memo to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who was overseeing Mueller’s inquiry.
“I know you will agree that, if a DOJ investigation is going to take down a democratically-elected President, it is imperative to the health of our system and to our national cohesion that any claim of wrongdoing is solidly based on evidence of a real crime — not a debatable one,” Barr said of Mueller’s work. “It is time to travel well-worn paths; not to veer into novel, unsettled or contested areas of the law; and not to indulge the fancies by overly-zealous prosecutors.”
