'I will be Loretta Lynch'
President Barack Obamaâs attorney general nominee came to Capitol Hill with one overriding message Wednesday: âI will be Loretta Lynch.â Translation: She wonât be Eric Holder â not the attorney general who has angered Republicans during a six-year contentious relationship in which lawmakers called for his resignation and the House held him in contempt. Story Continued Below But Senate Republicans repeatedly used Lynchâs nearly eight-hour confirmation hearing to invoke the controversies of Holderâs tenure, even as she pledge a fresh start with Congress, promised to maintain her independence from the White House and repeatedly declined to be pulled into drawn-out debates about issues like immigration, gay marriage and alleged targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) â asking her in jest, âYouâre not Eric Holder, are you?â â told Lynch that the outgoing attorney generalâs six-year record at the Justice Department was weighing heavily on lawmakersâ minds. He asked her: How will senators know you will not be another Holder? âIf confirmed as attorney general, I will be myself. I will be Loretta Lynch,â the veteran federal prosecutor responded. âAnd I would refer you to my record as United States attorney on two occasions as well as a practicing lawyer to see the independence that I have always brought to every particular matter.â Lynch, who would be the first black female attorney general, turned in a polished performance free of any serious stumbles. But some GOP senators were visibly frustrated that Lynch continually refused to weigh in on the substance of Obamaâs recent moves on immigration â beyond her view that Obama had acted within the Constitution and that the administrationâs legal rationale for its actions was âreasonable.â âI donât see any reason to doubt the reasonableness of those views,â Lynch told the Senate Judiciary Committee, while stressing that she was not involved in the decisions behind the actions. She also defended prosecutorial discretion and said law enforcement officials should be able to set priorities for using their limited resources when carrying out immigration enforcement. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), one of the most persistent critics of the administrationâs immigration policies, was clearly not satisfied with Lynchâs responses on Obamaâs latest executive action, telling her: âThatâs why I have difficulty with your nomination.â âNow youâre here defending it, and I believe itâs indefensible, so Iâm worried,â Sessions said. âI just want to tell you, thatâs a big problem.â Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) â after trying to get Lynch to expand on issues involving national security, immigration and the IRS â showed similarly displeasure. âTry as I might, there has been nothing I have been able to ask you that has yielded any answer suggesting any limitations whatsoever on the authority of the president,â Cruz told Lynch. âThat does not augur well for this committeeâs assessment of your willingness to stand up to the president when the Constitution and the laws so require.â Lynch found some signals of support from GOP corners, however. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), after finishing his round of questions, told her, âShould you be confirmed, I look forward to working with you.â And Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said to her, âIâm impressed with your qualifications, and I hope I can support your nomination.â The committee is not expected to vote on Lynch for at least a few more weeks, as the panel hops through procedural hoops involved with any nomination. She would need at least two Republican votes on the 20-member panel. But immigration wasnât a complete slam-dunk issue for Lynch, despite her weeks of preparation for the hearing and the widespread expectation that it would be one of the prime sticking points for Republican lawmakers. As she waded into questions about immigration, Lynch muddled some of the nuances of the law that apply to employers. During an exchange with Sessions, she referred repeatedly to employers taking account of a workerâs âcitizenship,â seeming to bless the practice. âWe have in place at this point in time a legal framework that requests â requires employers to both provide information about citizenship, as well as not hire individuals without citizenship,â Lynch said. In fact, businesses cannot limit their hiring to U.S. citizens, and a Justice Department office that Lynch would oversee seeks out cases in which employers unlawfully deny employment to legal immigrants. At another point, Lynch seemed to indicate that everyone in the United States has a ârightâ to work in the United States, regardless of their immigration status. Later, she walked back those answers, telling the committee under questioning from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that an immigrant whoâs here illegally cannot work, unless he or she has prior government approval. Congressional Republicans enraged at Obamaâs actions had prepared to make Lynchâs confirmation battle a broader war over the administrationâs immigration policies. Democrats argued that Obamaâs actions should not play a role in whether Lynch is confirmed, and that she should be judged on her own merits. âNow, they can sue [Obama] and let the courts decide,â Schumer said, referring to Republicans. âThe confirmation of Americaâs highest law enforcement official is not the time nor place to vent frustration.â Though immigration was a dominant issue early in the hearings, the Brooklyn-based federal prosecutor touched on other key issues in her opening remarks: terrorism, cyber-crimes, human trafficking and relations between law enforcement and minority communities. And she addressed a litany of other issues the senators threw at her: lethal use of drones, gay marriage, criminal justice reforms, gun rights and financial crimes. She emphasized her record on terrorism as a federal prosecutor in New York, noting that her office has tried more terrorism cases than any other U.S. attorneyâs office since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, including plots against the cityâs transportation systems and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. When Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) asked her to comment on waterboarding, Lynch said that âwaterboarding is torture â¦ and thus illegal.â In response to a question from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Lynch indicated that she backed the death penalty, calling it an âeffectiveâ punishment. On the matter of controversial surveillance programs led by the National Security Agency, Lynch said she believed they were âcertainly constitutional and effective.â She declined to weigh in on the merits of an August 2013 decision by the Justice Department not to challenge state laws that allow some uses of marijuana, stressing that it âcertainly would be my policy â¦ to continue to enforcing marijuana lawsâ on the federal level. She also broke with Obama on opinions about marijuana, disputing a year-old comment to The New Yorker in which the president said the drug was no more harmful than alcohol. And in response to questions from Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), Lynch indicated that she supports sending some terrorism cases to military commissions under certain conditions, telling the committee that she would use âall the tools in our arsenalâ as attorney general, including the military commission process. âWhen terrorists threaten Americans here or abroad, they will face American justice,â Lynch said. Lynchâs nomination comes at a time of tense relations between minority communities and law enforcement officials â stemming in part from the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner of Staten Island, New York, both black men who were killed by white police officers last year. Grand juries declined to return indictments in both cases. In her opening remarks, Lynch said strengthening relationships between law enforcement and the public will be a key priority for her as attorney general, promising to âdraw all voices into this important discussion.â She praised law enforcement officers âwho risk their lives every day in the protection of the communities we all serve.â âI have served with them. I have learned from them. I am a better prosecutor because of them,â Lynch told senators. âFew things have pained me more than the recent reports of tension and division between law enforcement and the communities we serve.â In the 1990s, Lynch helped secure convictions of New York City police officers who brutally assaulted Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, and as the current U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, her office is leading the investigation into the Garner case. Republicans raised other controversies under the Justice Departmentâs portfolio as the GOP majority began taking up the first major Obama administration nominee to face confirmation under its control of the Senate. In his opening statement, committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) raised issues such as the botched âgun-walkingâ operation Fast and Furious, alleged targeting of conservative groups by the IRS and his view that the Justice Departmentâs Office of Legal Counselâs legal opinions should be regularly made public. âI donât expect Ms. Lynch and I will agree on every issue,â Grassley said. âBut I, for one, need to be persuaded she will be an independent attorney general, and I have no reason to believe â at this point â that she wonât be.â Much of her opening remarks, Lynchâs first chance to publicly introduce herself to Congress, took a personal tone. Lynch, the daughter of a Baptist minister and a retired English teacher, talked about how her parents fought against segregation and instilled in her the values of education, hard work and sacrifice. Lynch was accompanied by her husband, Stephen Hargrove, her father, Lorenzo, and her brother Leonzo. Her other brother, former Navy SEAL Lorenzo Lynch Jr., died in 2009, and the attorney general nominee had his Navy SEAL trident with her on the witness table. Dozens of members of her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, were there in support of Lynch, decked out in their traditional red. She recalled how in the early 1960s, her father would open up his Greensboro, North Carolina, church to civil rights activists and stand alongside them as he carried Lynch, as a little girl, on his shoulders. âAs I come before you today in this historic chamber, I still stand on my fatherâs shoulders, as well as on the shoulders of all those who have gone before me and who dreamed of making the promise of America a reality for all and worked to achieve that goal,â Lynch said. âI believe in the promise of America because I have lived the promise of America.â Lynch was not an unfamiliar face to the committee. She had already met with all 20 members privately, and one of its Democratic members â Schumer â introduced Lynch at her confirmation hearing along with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). She got a largely warm reception during the morning first round of hearings from both Republicans and Democrats, with one senior member â Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) â telling Lynch that of the six attorney general nominations she has sat through in her tenure, Lynchâs opening statement was âthe best.â âI am confident that if we stay focused on Ms. Lynchâs impeccable qualifications and fierce independence, she will be quickly confirmed by the Senate,â said Leahy, the committeeâs former chairman. âMs. Lynch deserves a fair, thoughtful, and respectful confirmation process.â