Republican lawmakers’ bothered fixation on US attorney general Eric Holder showed no signs of dissipating during a second day of marathon hearings to confirm his replacement on Thursday – but that didn’t seem to slow nominee Loretta Lynch’s progress toward the top spot in the justice department.
Lynch spent much of the first day of her confirmation hearings telling Republican senators that she was not Holder. The senators used day two to build a case for why that was a good thing.
Sharyl Attkisson, an investigative reporter, described a “frenzied campaign with White House officials trying to chill” her reporting on the Fast and Furious gun-walking program, a long-time Republican bugbear. “One White House official got so mad, he angrily cussed me out,” she said.
“The Justice Department is in dire need of new leadership,” Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah and a member of the committee, said Thursday. He added that he thought Lynch could provide it.
“Throughout her confirmation hearing, Ms Lynch has demonstrated her qualifications and made specific commitments to work with Congress,” Hatch said in a statement. “I plan to support her nomination and will seek to help ensure that she upholds her commitments to enforce the law.”
Further bolstering Lynch’s bid was the unwillingness of any potentially antagonistic witnesses called Thursday to publicly withhold support for the nomination. Senator Patrick Leahy asked anyone on the panel of nine who opposed Lynch to raise a hand. No one did.
Sen. Leahy just asked witnesses to raise hands if they opposed Lynch nomination. No hands pic.twitter.com/dzPrtCT7Xm
— America's Voice (@americasvoice) January 29, 2015
Lynch’s support on the committee was not unanimous, however. Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama said he would vote against the nomination because Lynch “supported the president’s unlawful actions” to defer deportations for some undocumented migrants.
“Unfortunately, when asked today whether she found the President’s actions to be ‘legal and constitutional’, Ms Lynch said that she did,” Sessions said in a statement Wednesday. “I therefore am unable to support her nomination.”
Press secretary Josh Earnest praised Lynch’s performance and said the White House hoped for her confirmation before the Senate recesses in mid-February.
Judiciary chairman Chuck Grassley said on C-SPAN Thursday that he was “not yet” convinced he should support Lynch.
“There’s still a lot of written questions that she will respond to in the next week or so, and then we’ll look at the entire record,” Grassley said. But “there’s no question about her qualifications, her confidence,” he said. “She’s just very eloquent.”
