Obama officially nominates Loretta Lynch to replace Holder as AG

After Democrats’ electoral drubbing at the polls Tuesday, Obama tapped Lynch over more high-profile candidates who would face more difficult confirmation battles in a GOP-controlled Senate.

In a short ceremony in the White House’s Roosevelt Room Saturday morning, Obama said he was “enormously grateful” for Holder’s service.

“He is one of the longest-serving attorney generals in history and one of America’s finest,” Obama said. “Thanks to Eric, our nation is safer and freer … and more Americans receive fair and equal treatment under the law. I couldn’t be prouder of Eric.”

Introducing Lynch, Obama said she shares Holder’s “fierce commitment to equal justice under the law” and has sent several high-profile terrorists, white-collar financial criminals and mobsters to jail.

“It’s pretty hard to be more qualified for this job than Loretta,” he said. “She has distinguished herself as tough and fair, someone who has twice headed a U.S. attorneys office…all while vigorously defending civil rights.”

Lynch, he said, successfully prosecuted the terrorists who plotted to bomb New York’s Federal Reserve Bank and the New York City subway. She’s also helped secure billions in settlements from some of the world’s largest banks and gained recognition as a top prosecutor in a high-profile police brutality case involving a white New York police officer sodomizing a Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima, with a broken broomstick in 1997.

“Loretta doesn’t look to make headlines — she looks to make a difference,” he said.

The daughter of a librarian and a Baptist minister, Lynch grew up in Greensboro, N.C., and went on to receive her undergraduate and law degree from Harvard.

Obama said she was inspired by her grandfather who helped friends with legal advice who “had no recourse under the Jim Crow system” of racial segregation laws.

“Loretta has spent her life fighting for the fair and equal justice that is the foundation of our democracy,” Obama said. “I can think of no better public servant.”

Lynch thanked Obama for his faith in her, for “asking me to serve an attorney general that I admire and the Justice Department that I love.”  

She also thanked her family, especially her parents, who made great sacrifices for their children.

“The Department of Justice is the only department named for an idea,” she said, “and it is both inspiration and ground in gritty reality.”

“I am so thrilled and frankly, so humbled to have the opportunity to lead this group of people to make that idea a manifest realty,” she said.

Lynch also pledged to “wake up every morning with the protection of the American people as my first thought.”

Lynch’s name had been circulating as one of three contenders to replace Holder over the last few months, although many Democrats believed the president would select her to replace Deputy Attorney General James Cole, who is also departing.

But after Tuesday’s election, Democrats doubted the other two top candidates, Labor Secretary Tom Perez and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli could survive what is expected to be a bruising confirmation battle in a GOP-controlled Senate.

In announcing Lynch, Obama underscored that the Senate had twice approved her appointment to U.S. attorney positions by acclamation — once in 2000 and again in 2010.

One of Lynch’s main strengths that positions her well for Senate confirmation is that she would be a fresh face in the administration as someone who is not too closely tied to the Obama administration and doesn’t have a record of defending Obama’s policies.

In announcing her selection, Obama touted her decades of experience in various divisions of U.S. attorney’s office and in private practice, but others said it’s rare for a U.S. attorney to be elevated to attorney general.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, made that point in a statement Friday night reacting to Obama’s plans to nominate Lynch.

“As we move forward with the confirmation process, I have every confidence that Ms. Lynch will receive a very fair, but thorough, vetting by the Judiciary Committee,” he said.  “U.S. attorneys are rarely elevated directly to this position, so I look forward to learning more about her, how she will interact with Congress, and how she proposes to lead the department.”

“I’m hopeful that her tenure, if confirmed, will restore confidence in the attorney general as a politically independent voice for the American people,” he added.

It’s also unclear whether Senate Democrats will try to push her nomination through the Senate during the lame-duck session. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who will become majority leader in January, Friday issued a stern warning to Senate Democratic leaders not to attempt to do so but wait until Republicans take over next year to allow for a thorough confirmation process.