12.11.08

Whitehouse Speaks on Nomination of Eric Holder to be Attorney General

Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, a moment ago I had the honor of presiding before the distinguished Senator from Florida just replaced me in the chair, and I was presiding during the time that the distinguished Senator from Iowa, Senator Grassley, and the distinguished Senator from Arizona, Senator Kyl, came to the floor to discuss the timing of the nomination proceedings for the President-Elect's candidate for Attorney General, Eric Holder. And I had the chance to hear the points that they made, and I wish, just briefly, to respond to a few of them.

As the junior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I'm certainly in no position to speak for the chairman. Obviously we heard Senator Kyl ask that the timing be done on a reasonable basis, and I think Senator Leahy, the very distinguished Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is nothing if not reasonable, and has shown enormous reasonableness with the timing of all of the nominees that have come before him. And I would expect that to be no different. But in evaluating the reasonableness of the schedule that the Chairman has proposed, or, I should say, announced, it may be worth putting it into the context of the history of these sorts of nominees.

If you go all the way back to President Carter, for more than 30 years, whether the Senate was controlled by Republicans or Democrats, or the president was a Republican or a Democrat, we have had nominees for Attorney General come through the process. And throughout that long span of time, the average time between the announcement by the president of his choice for Attorney General and the nomination hearing, the average amount of time has been 29 days. And the average amount of time until a committee vote has been 37 days.

So that's the background. If you average over 30 years, from the announcement, 29 days to the hearing, 37 days to the vote. The schedule that Chairman Leahy has proposed is 39 days to the hearing, and he hopes for 50 days to the vote.

So instead of the average that it has been over 30 years, of 29 days, the Republicans have 10 extra days beyond the average to do the work that they assert that they need to do, and the vote may not come for 50 days, which is 11 days longer than the average.

I think everyone in this body understands the importance of a new president having his new Attorney General in place quickly. And the President's going to be sworn in on January 20th, and I think it's in all of our interest as Americans to make sure that his choice is honored in a reasonable time frame so that when the President takes office, he has an intact team. Certainly with the Attorney General as such an important part of the President's national security team in this time of national security concerns, he should have an intact team.

And so it seems to me that the average is a pretty reasonable place to start, and when the Chairman is given an extra 10 days beyond the average just to the beginning of hearings, and hopefully an extra 13 days beyond the average for the vote, it's a pretty good signal that the Chairman is being very, very reasonable about this.

Most recently, some of the Attorneys General that we've seen, Attorney General Mukasey had a period of 30 days from his nomination to the start of the hearings. That was at President Bush's request. Remember, he indicated that he wanted to get him in place soon. The Department was in grave distress, and we needed to act quickly. We acted in 30 days. We're acting here in 39 days, more than was given for Attorney General Mukasey. The vote is the same as for Attorney General Mukasey: 50 days from announcement to the vote.

It doesn't sound unreasonable. Nobody said it was unreasonable when Attorney General Mukasey was put through that schedule. I don't see how it can be unreasonable that Eric Holder should have a more generous schedule, and somehow that is no longer reasonable. For Attorney General Ashcroft, it was 25 days to the hearing instead of 39, 39 days to the vote instead of the hoped-for 50. For Attorney General Reno, 26 days to the hearing instead of 39 days, 27 days to the vote instead of the hoped-for 50. Nearly twice as much time as for Attorney General Reno.

So I think the point is pretty clear. It is the tradition and the history of this body to honor the president's request to act quickly, and in terms of the reasonableness of the schedule that Chairman Leahy has proposed, he has proposed a schedule that is on the generous side of the average and of recent history.

With respect to the concern that there is a lot to look at in Eric Holder's history, well, you know, every lawyer, every lawyer who is experienced and active enough in the profession to be a candidate to be Attorney General of the United States has got a long history to look at. That is a given. That is a constant. That is not something that is different about Eric Holder than about any of his predecessors.

Indeed, if anything, the opposite concern would be justified, which is that we've already had a lot of time to look at Eric Holder. First of all, he has an astonishingly distinguished record to be Attorney General. It's really remarkable. His personal story, his career. It is all spectacular, truly. But specific to the question of nomination, this is a lawyer who came right after law school to the Department of Justice and served as a prosecutor for a decade prosecuting public corruption cases. So he had to be cleared by the F.B.I. to come in as a Department of Justice attorney.

And he served there for all of those 10 years, that's all a matter of clear public record. Everybody's had a chance to look at that forever. The next thing that happened in 1988, Eric Holder was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to the bench to serve as Superior Court Judge in Washington, D.C. Again, he was confirmed by the Senate. We had a full look at everything up to 1988. After his service on the bench, Eric Holder was nominated by President Clinton to serve as the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. United States Attorney Holder and I were colleagues: me in Rhode Island, him down in D.C.

I went through that process of nomination and confirmation. It is exhaustive. It was done for him. He was confirmed at that time. So as of the date that he was appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, we had done a complete Senate look at his record to that point.

And that wasn't the last time. In 1997 President Clinton nominated U.S. Attorney Holder to serve as the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, Attorney General Reno's number two in that Department. And he was then confirmed by this body, the United States Senate, unanimously. And, again, we had that full record of his before us at that time.

So this is a guy who has been a subject of very public attention as a public official, the Deputy Attorney General. There wasn't a whole lot that one does as Deputy Attorney General that isn't available to the public, that isn't in the news media. This is not somebody who's come out of no place and who has a great, vast mysterious past history that we need to have a look at. Indeed, this body has had three looks at him, confirmed him three separate times. The most recent time as late as 1997, unanimously. So I think the notion that with only from 1997 to now to look forward to, a period of a mere decade, the idea that he is being shoved unreasonably rapidly through the process, when he is substantially slower than the average, simply really doesn't hold water.

And I would urge my Republican colleagues, again, they can have discussions with the Chairman that obviously are at a rank higher than mine. But I would urge my colleagues to consider their views in that context. In the context of a spectacularly qualified individual who has thrice been confirmed by this body as recently as 1997, who is being given more time for scrutiny than the average or by the recent Bush appointees, and in an environment in which I think we can all agree that after the Bush management of the Department of Justice we badly need a new Attorney General in there, and soon.

So with those observations I'll yield the floor. I thank my colleagues for waiting while I finish my remarks. I see the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma on the other side of the house here and I yield the floor.

###