Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, complained Tuesday that Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the attorney general nominee, submitted incomplete responses to a standard panel questionnaire and accused Sessions and his staff of putting it together “in haste” even though it far exceeded previous nominees’ responses in length.
Sessions’ answers to the committee’s questionnaire, Feinstein said, are in excess of 150,000 pages of material, more than 100 times what Attorney General Loretta Lynch produced and more than 29 times what Attorney General Eric Holder offered.
“… Despite being voluminous, Senator Sessions’ production appears to have been put together in haste and is, on its face, incomplete,” she wrote Tuesday in a letter to Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
The California Democrat made the recent allegations in a letter renewing her call for Grassley to provide more time for the committee staff to review Sessions’ response to the questionnaire.
“I am sure you would agree that staff must have sufficient time to do the due diligence on any nominee for this vital position – and this due diligence will likely take longer than the review for recent, prior nominees who had less materials to analyze,” she wrote.
Grassley has set confirmation hearings for consideration of Sessions’ nomination for Jan. 10 and 11, more than a week before Inauguration Day.
In announcing the dates, Grassley said the confirmation hearings for the last four attorneys general lasted one to two days with a range of three to nine outside witnesses testifying.
He also said the Senate Judiciary Committee has held hearings for the nominee for attorney general for every new president dating back to President Dwight Eisenhower before the presidential inauguration.
