[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 20 (Monday, February 6, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S855-S865]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Motion to Proceed in Order

  Mr. President, I move that the Senator from Massachusetts be 
permitted to proceed in order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. 
Sessions).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Carper), 
the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons), the Senator from California 
(Mrs. Feinstein), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the 
Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner) are necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 43, nays 50, as follows:

                       [Rollcall Vote No. 58 Ex.]

                                YEAS--43

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Casey
     Cortez Masto
     Donnelly
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Harris
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--50

     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Wicker
     Young

                             NOT VOTING--7

     Carper
     Coons
     Cruz
     Feinstein
     Sanders
     Sessions
     Warner
  The motion was rejected.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, if the average American heard someone 
read a letter from Coretta Scott King that

[[Page S856]]

said what it said, they would not be offended. They would say that is 
someone's opinion; that is all.
  It seems to me that we could use rule XIX almost every day on the 
floor of the Senate. This is selective enforcement, and another example 
of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle escalating the 
partisanship and further decreasing comity in the Senate.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I have a question. I guess it is in 
the nature of a parliamentary question, and that is, whether it would 
be in order to ask unanimous consent that the letter from which Senator 
Warren read be put into the Record as a confirmation that she was, in 
fact, accurately reading from the letter, that it be added as an 
exhibit in the Congressional Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The text of the letter is in the Record of the 
Senate as the Senator was reading it in her testimony.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The text of the letter as she read it, but not the 
complete letter.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator may ask consent.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that the complete letter from 
which Senator Warren read be printed in the Congressional Record to 
confirm that she has in fact read from it.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. RISCH. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, this is fascinating. I say to my 
colleagues, I have served here longer than any other Member of this 
body. I have been here 42 years. I have been here when the Democrats 
were in the majority and when the Republicans were in the majority, 
with Democratic Presidents and Republican Presidents. I have never, 
ever seen a time when a Member of the Senate asked to put into the 
Record a letter especially by a civil rights icon and somebody 
objected. It has always been done.
  I have had letters that people have asked to be put in that were 
contrary to a position that I might take. Of course, I would not 
object. They are allowed to do it. I have seen letters when Members of 
both sides of the aisle have debated back and forth and the other side 
would put in letters that were contrary to their opponents' positions, 
and of course nobody objected.
  Don't let the Senate turn into something it has never been before. I 
would hope that cooler heads would prevail, and we go back to the 
things that made the Senate great, that made the Senate the conscience 
of the Nation, as it should be.
  I have never once objected to a Senator introducing a letter, even 
though they took a position different than mine. I have never known of 
a Republican Senator to do that, and here we are talking about a letter 
from a civil rights icon.
  Let's not go down this path. It is not good for the country. It is 
not good for the Senate, it is not good for democracy, and it sure as 
heck is not good for free speech.
  I admire the Senator from Rhode Island. He is a man of great 
integrity, a man who was attorney general of his State and U.S. 
attorney in his State. His request was something that is normally 
accepted automatically. I would hope Senators would reconsider.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, I am the one who entered the objection, and 
let me say to my good friend from Vermont that I agree with him 100 
percent that we should get back to what made the Senate great.
  We have rules around here, and the rules are very clear that you 
don't impugn another Senator. Now, you can't do that in your words and 
you can't do it with writings. You can't hold up a writing that impugns 
another Senator and say: Well, this is what somebody else said. I am 
not saying it, but that is OK.
  It is not OK. It is a violation of the rules, and we should get back 
to what made this Senate great, and that is, to stay within the rules, 
stay within civility, and not impugning another Senator, whether it is 
through words or whether it is through writings.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I have a parliamentary inquiry as well.
  The first question, Mr. President, is this: It is my understanding 
that the ruling of the Chair was based on the advice of the 
Parliamentarian. Is that accurate, Mr. President; on the advice of the 
Parliamentarian that the rule had been violated?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. No. The Chair sustained the ruling of the 
majority leader on his own.
  Mr. RUBIO. OK. The second question I have, Mr. President: Does the 
rule say anything that impugns another Member of the Senate, directly 
or indirectly? Is that an accurate reading of the rule?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct, and I will read the 
paragraph. This is rule XIX, section 2.

       No Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any 
     form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators 
     any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.

  Mr. RUBIO. Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. A parliamentary inquiry.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. State your question.
  Mr. MERKLEY. If a Member of the Senate is being considered for 
nomination, and we are exercising our advice and consent power, and if 
there is factual conduct in that individual's background that is 
presented on the floor that is uncomplimentary, would presenting the 
facts of that conduct in the process of debating an individual be 
considered in violation of rule XIX?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The rule makes no distinction between those 
Senators who are nominees and those who are not. The rule does not 
permit truth to be a defense of the slight.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, just to make sure I understand that 
clearly, if we are considering a nominee who happens to be a Senator 
and we state factual elements of their background, for example, the 
conviction of a crime that is inappropriate conduct in the past, 
stating the factual record about an individual would be considered in 
violation of rule XIX?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Each of these cases will be decided by the 
Presiding Officer in the context at that time.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Just to clarify, if I could, therefore, the point is 
that something could be absolutely true, as, perhaps, a point that was 
made earlier--a statement can be true in a letter that is presented--
but even if it is true and accurate for a person under consideration 
for a nomination, it would still be in violation. In other words, the 
fact that an individual is found in violation of rule XIX doesn't mean 
that the statement had to be false. It could have been a true 
statement?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. You are correct, Senator.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant Republican leader.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I just want the Record to be abundantly 
clear. The language that resulted in the vote that we had invoking rule 
XIX was related to a quotation from Senator Ted Kennedy that called the 
nominee ``a disgrace to the Justice Department, and he should withdraw 
his nomination and resign his position.'' That was the quote. Our 
colleagues want to try to make this all about Coretta Scott King and it 
is not. I think the complete context should be part of the Record.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Parliamentary inquiry.
  Mr. SCHUMER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, it is my understanding--I was not there--
that there was a warning over Senator Kennedy's letter, but the actual 
ruling was based on Coretta Scott King's letter; is that correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes, that is correct.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.

[[Page S857]]

  

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, pursuing Senator Merkley's 
hypothetical, if it came before the Senate that a Member of the Senate 
who was a nominee seeking the advice and consent of the Senate to the 
position was, for example, in fact, a horse thief, and we found the 
fact that he was a horse thief to be relevant to whether or not he 
should be confirmed, say, to the Department of Interior, which has 
authority over lands, does the ruling of the Chair mean that it would 
not be in order for the Senate or for Senators to consider what in my 
hypothetical is the established fact that the Senator was a horse thief 
as we debate his nomination here on the floor?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Once again, the answer is the same, that each 
of these decisions will be made at the time and in the context in which 
they occur, and the decision of the Chair is subject to a vote of the 
Senate and an appeal.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I guess, Mr. President, what I don't understand is 
that we have fairly significant responsibilities under the Constitution 
to provide advice and consent. It appears that the ruling of the Chair 
has just been that when a Member of this body is the subject of that 
advice and consent, then derogatory information about that person is 
not in order and is a violation of rule XIX on the Senate floor. And 
with that being the ruling, I don't know how we go about doing our 
duties. Are we supposed to simply blind ourselves to derogatory 
information, discuss it privately in the cloak rooms, not bring it out 
onto the floor of the U.S. Senate, this supposedly great debating 
society that actually has a constitutional responsibility to discuss 
both the advantages and the deficits of a particular nominee?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. In each case, it is the opinion of the 
President, subject to the final vote by the Senate to support or not to 
support the President's decision.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. So the precedent going forward is that any Senator 
who discusses derogatory information that is a matter of public record, 
that may even include criminal behavior by a Senator who is a candidate 
for Executive appointment that requires advice and consent, is at risk 
of being sanctioned by this body by a simple partisan majority of this 
body under rule XIX if they raise those issues on the floor?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. It is not necessary for a point of order to be 
raised under rule XIX, but if the point of order is raised, an opinion 
will be made and it is subject to a vote of the Senate in the manner 
previously described.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I first have a parliamentary inquiry. These 
are the continuing rules of the Senate that have been in existence 
previous to this time and have carried over into this session, is that 
correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. RUBIO. The reason I ask that is the following--but I think we all 
feel very passionate about the issues before us. I have not been here 
as long as Senator Leahy, whose service has been quite distinguished 
over a long period of time. I truly do understand the passions people 
bring to this body. I like to think that I, too, am passionate about 
the issues before us.
  I think this is an important moment. It is late. Not many people are 
paying attention. I wish they would though because I think the question 
here is one of the reasons I ran for this body to begin with. Maybe it 
is because of my background; I am surrounded by people who have lost 
freedoms in places where they are not allowed to speak. One of the 
great traditions of our Nation is the ability to come forward and have 
debates.
  But the Founders and the Framers and those who established this 
institution and guided us over two centuries understood that that 
debate was impossible if, in fact, the matter became of a personal 
nature. I don't believe that was necessarily the intention here, 
although perhaps that was the way it turned out. But I think it is 
important for us to understand why that matters so much.
  I want people to think about our politics here in America because I 
am telling you guys, I don't know of a single Nation in the history of 
the world that has been able to solve its problems when half the people 
in the country absolutely hate the other half of the people in that 
country. This is the most important country in the world, and this body 
cannot function if people are offending one another, and that is why 
those rules are in place.
  I was not here when Secretary Clinton was nominated as a Member of 
this body at the time, but I can tell you that I am just barely old 
enough to know that some very nasty things have been written and said 
about Senator Clinton. And I think the Senate should be very proud that 
during her nomination to be Secretary of State--despite the fact that I 
imagine many people were not excited about the fact that she would be 
Secretary of State--to my recollection, and perhaps I am incorrect, not 
a single one of those horrible things that have been written or said 
about her, some of which actually did accuse her of wrongdoing, was 
uttered on the floor of the Senate.
  I happen to remember in 2004 when then-Senator Kerry ran for 
President. Some pretty strong things were written and said about him. I 
was here for that when he was nominated and confirmed to be Secretary 
of State. And I don't recall a single statement being read into the 
Record about the things that have been said about him.
  Now, I want everybody to understand that at the end of the night, 
this is not a partisan issue. It really is not. I can tell you this 
with full confidence that if one of my colleagues on this side of the 
aisle had done that, I would also like to think that I would have been 
one of those people objecting, and here is why.
  Turn on the news and watch these parliaments around the world where 
people throw chairs at each other and throw punches, and ask yourself: 
How does that make you feel about those countries? It doesn't give you 
a lot of confidence about those countries. I am not arguing that we are 
anywhere near that tonight, but we are flirting with it. We are 
flirting with it in this body, and we are flirting with it in this 
country. We are becoming a society incapable of having debates anymore.
  In this country, if you watch the big policy debates that are going 
on in America, no one ever stops to say: I think you are wrong. I 
understand your point of view. I get it. You have some valid points, 
but let me tell you why I think my view is better. I don't hear that 
anymore.

  Here is what I hear almost automatically--and let me be fair--from 
both sides of these debates. Immediately, immediately, as soon as you 
offer an idea, the other side jumps and says that the reason you say 
that is because you don't care about poor people, because you only care 
about rich people, because you are this or you are that or you are the 
other. And I am just telling you guys, we are reaching a point in this 
Republic where we are not going to be able to solve the simplest of 
issues because everyone is putting themselves in the corner where 
everyone hates everybody.
  Now I don't pretend to say that I am not myself from time to time in 
heated debates outside of this forum. I have been guilty of perhaps 
hyperbole, and for those--I am not proud of it.
  But I have to tell you, I think what is at stake here tonight and as 
we debate moving forward is not simply some rule but the ability of the 
most important Nation on Earth to debate in a productive and respectful 
way the pressing issues before us. I just hope we understand that 
because I have tremendous respect for the other Chamber, and I 
understand that it was designed to be different. But one of the reasons 
I chose to run for the Senate and, quite frankly, to run for reelection 
is that I believed I served with 99 other men and women who deeply love 
their country, who have different points of view, who represent men and 
women who have different views from the men and women whom I may 
represent on a given issue and who are here to advocate for their 
points of view, never impugning their motives.
  One of the things I take great pride in--and I tell this to people 
all the time--is that the one thing you learn about the Senate is, 
whether you agree with them or not, you understand why every single one 
of those other 99 people are here. They are intelligent people, they 
are smart people, they are

[[Page S858]]

hard-working people. They believe in what they are saying, and they 
articulate it in a very passionate and effective way.
  When I see my colleague stand up and say something I don't agree 
with, I try to tell myself: Look, I don't understand why they stand for 
that, but I know why they are doing it. It is because they represent 
people who believe that.
  I am so grateful that God has allowed me to be born, to live, and to 
raise my family in a nation where people with such different points of 
view are able to debate those things in a way that doesn't lead to war, 
that doesn't lead to overthrows, that doesn't lead to violence. And you 
may take that for granted.
  All around the world tonight, there are people who, if they stood up 
here and said the things that we say about the President or others in 
authority, they would go to jail. I am not saying that is where we are 
headed as a nation; I am just saying, don't ever take that for granted.
  The linchpin of that is this institution. The linchpin of that debate 
is the ability of this institution through unlimited debate and the 
decorum necessary for that debate to be able to conduct itself in that 
manner.
  I know that tonight was probably a made-for-TV moment for some 
people. This has nothing to do with censuring the words of some great 
heroes. I have extraordinary admiration for the men and women who led 
the civil rights effort in this country, and I am self-conscious or 
understanding enough to know that many of the things that have been 
possible for so many people in this country in the 21st century were 
made possible by the sacrifices and the work of those who came before 
us.
  This has to do with a fundamental reality, and that is that this body 
cannot carry out its work if it is not able to conduct debates in a way 
that is respectful of one another, especially those of us who are in 
this Chamber together.
  I also understand this: If the Senate ceases to work, if we reach a 
point where this institution--given everything else that is going on in 
politics today, where you are basically allowed to say just about 
anything, for I have seen over the last year and a half things said 
about people, about issues, about institutions in our republic that I 
never thought I would see ever--ever. If we lose this body's ability to 
conduct debate in a dignified manner--and I mean this with no 
disrespect to anyone else. I don't believe anyone came on the floor 
here tonight saying: I am going to be disrespectful on purpose and turn 
this into a circus. But I am just telling you that if this body loses 
the ability to have those sorts of debates, then where in this country 
is that going to happen? In what other forum in this Nation is that 
going to be possible?
  So I would just hope everybody would stop and think about that. I 
know I have been here only for 6 years, so I don't have a deep 
reservoir of Senate history to rely on. But I know this: If this body 
isn't capable of having those debates, there will be no place in this 
country where those debates can occur. I think every single one of us, 
to our great shame, will live to regret it.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I don't want to prolong this much more. 
In light of what my friend from Florida said, I would just reread what 
I said earlier.
  If average Americans heard someone read a letter from Coretta Scott 
King that said what it said, they would not be offended. They would say 
that is someone's opinion. That is all.
  It seems to me we could use rule XIX almost every day on the floor of 
the Senate, as my colleague from Maine so pointedly and piquantly 
exhibited a few minutes ago.
  This selective enforcement is another example of our colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle escalating the partisanship and further 
decreasing the comity of the Senate, which I treasure as well. This was 
unnecessary.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I take umbrage with what the minority 
leader said. I sat here and listened to the distinguished Senator from 
Massachusetts, who went on and on and on. Many of her remarks were 
criticizing a fellow colleague in the Senate. I don't know about the 
other side, but I find it offensive for either side to be criticizing, 
as was done here tonight, a sitting Member of the Senate.
  I am absolutely astounded that the Democrats, my friends on the other 
side, have taken to the war tables a desire to defeat Jeff Sessions. I 
have been here a long time, and I have to say that I knew Jeff Sessions 
even before he came here, and I have known him since he has been here. 
And, yes, I differ with him on a number of issues, but I would never 
say things about him as have been said by my colleagues on the other 
side. I think that we all ought to take some stock in what we are doing 
here.
  Jeff Sessions is a very fine person. Think of his wife. She is a 
really fine person. Jeff has been here 20 years. He has interchanged 
with almost all of us. Sometimes you agree with him, and sometimes you 
disagree with him, but he has always been a gentleman. He has always 
been kind and considerate of his colleagues. I can't name one time when 
he wasn't. Yet we are treating him like he is some terrible person who 
doesn't deserve to be chosen by the current President of the United 
States to be Attorney General of the United States.
  I think we ought to be ashamed of ourselves--I really do--on both 
sides. And frankly, we have to get to where everything is not an issue 
here. I know some of my friends on the other side and I have chatted, 
and they are not happy with the way this body is going with good 
reason.
  Everything doesn't have to lead to a gun fight on the floor, but that 
is where we are going. And frankly, sometimes there is an awful lot of 
politics being played here on both sides.
  Look, I happen to like the senior Senator from Massachusetts. I think 
she is an intelligent, lovely woman in many ways. But I have to tell 
you, I listened to her for quite a while, and she didn't have a good 
thing to say about a fellow Senator. Frankly, I don't think that is 
right. If we don't respect each other, we are going down a very steep 
path to oblivion.
  I would hope that both sides would take stock of these debates. We 
can differ. We understand that the Democrats are not happy with the 
current President. We are happy with him. We can differ on that, and we 
can fight over various issues and so forth. But to attack a fellow 
Senator without reservation seems to me the wrong thing to do.
  It may not have risen to the level of a violation of the rules, but I 
think it comes close, and I have sat here and listened to most of it 
and, frankly, I don't believe that the distinguished Senator from 
Massachusetts was right in any respect. I have been here a long time 
and I have seen some pretty rough talk, but never like we have had this 
first couple of months here. We have gone so far on both sides that we 
are almost dysfunctional.

  I admit it was tough for the Democrats to lose the Presidential 
election. Most people thought that Hillary Clinton would win. I was not 
one of them. I thought there was a real chance because I knew a lot of 
people would not say for whom they were going to vote. I think, 
correctly, I interpreted that meant that they were going to vote for 
Donald Trump, and the reason they were is that they are tired of what 
is going on. They are tired of what is hurting this country. They are 
tired of the picayune little fights that we have around here.
  I think we have to grow up. I suggest that all of us take stock of 
ourselves and see if we can treat each other with greater respect. I 
have to say, I resented--as much as I like the distinguished Senator 
from Massachusetts, I resent the constant diatribe against a fellow 
Senator. Even if everything she said was true, it wasn't the right 
thing to do. I don't think any of us should do that to them, either. We 
can differ, we can argue, we can fight over certain words and so forth, 
but I have been appalled at the way the Democrats have treated Jeff 
Sessions. I have found Jeff Sessions--having worked with him for 20 
years and having disagreed with him on a number of things--to be a 
gentleman in every respect and to present his viewpoints in a 
reasonable and decent way.
  I would hope that my colleagues on the other side would consider 
voting

[[Page S859]]

for Jeff Sessions or at least treating him with respect.
  I admit that I think some of this comes from the fact that they are 
very upset at Donald Trump, and it is easy to see why. He won a very 
tough, contested election against one of their principal people. That 
is hard to take, maybe. That doesn't justify what has been going on 
against Jeff Sessions.
  We ought to be proud that Jeff has a chance to become the Attorney 
General of the United States, and he is going to be. That is the thing 
that really bothers me. Everybody on the other side knows that we have 
the votes to finally do this. Yet, they are treating it as though this 
is something that they have to try and win--which they are not going to 
win--and, in the process, treating a fellow Senator with disdain. It is 
wrong.
  We should all take stock of ourselves. I am not accusing my 
colleagues of not being sincere, but they have been sincerely wrong. I 
am personally fed up with it. If we want to fight every day and just go 
after each other like people who just don't care about etiquette and 
courtesy, I guess we can do that, but I think it is the wrong thing to 
do.
  I hope all of us will stop, take note of what has been going on, and 
on both sides start trying to work together. I know it was tough for my 
Democrat friends to lose the Presidential election. I know that was 
tough. And they didn't think they were going to, and, frankly, a lot of 
us didn't think they were going to. I did think that. But, then again, 
I was one of two Senators who supported Donald Trump, in my opinion, 
with very, very good reason. I am sure that doesn't convince any 
Democrats on the other side.
  The fact is that we have to treat each other with respect or this 
place is going to devolve into nothing but a jungle, and that would 
truly be a very, very bad thing.
  I am not perfect, so I don't mean to act like I am, but I have to say 
that all of us need to take stock. We need to start thinking about the 
people on the other side. We need to start thinking about how we might 
bring each other together in the best interests of our country and how 
we might literally elevate the Senate to the position that we all hope 
it will be.
  I love all of my colleagues. There is not one person in this body 
that I don't care for a lot. I disagree quite a bit with some of my 
colleagues on the other side, and even some folks on our side, but that 
doesn't mean that I have to treat them with disrespect.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Ernst). The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I first want to say a few words about 
the Senator from Massachusetts and her passion and what she has brought 
to this Chamber. While I know she has not been allowed to complete her 
remarks today, I know that will not silence her, and we look forward to 
hearing from her tomorrow and many days in the future on so many 
topics.
  I also wanted to say something about my friend from Utah. We have 
worked together on so many bills. I have seen firsthand that he means 
what he says about treating this Chamber with the dignity that we all 
deserve and that the American people deserve.
  Also, I was especially impressed by the words from the Senator from 
Florida. When I see the majority leader and the Democratic leader over 
there talking in the corner now, I think that is a good sign, because I 
have never seen a time where the Senate is more important, as the 
Senator from Florida was mentioning.
  This is a moment in time where the Senate will not just be a check 
and balance, but it is also a place for compromise. The one issue where 
I would differ slightly with my friend and colleague from Utah is that 
this isn't just about Democrats responding with surprise or anger to 
the election of a new President. There have been a lot of things said 
in the last few months, including calling judges ``so-called judges'' 
and some of the discussions and comparisons to foreign leaders, and 
things that we have heard from the White House in the last few weeks, 
including the order that was issued that some of our Republican 
colleagues expressed a lot of concern about and that the Senate wasn't 
involved in and that a lot of law enforcement people weren't involved 
in.
  There have been reasons that people's passions are high, and there 
are reasons that are good ones because we care about this country. So I 
hope people will see that in perspective for why people are reacting 
the way they do.
  As for the Senator from Alabama, as I would call him for the purpose 
of these remarks, I am someone who has worked well with him. We have 
done bills together on adoption, and we have worked together on 
trafficking, and I am proud of the work I have done with him. We have 
also gone to the State of the Union together every single year, and I 
value his friendship.
  I came to the conclusion that I couldn't support him not for personal 
reasons, but because of some of the views he has expressed in the past 
and his record on the Violence Against Women Act, his views on 
immigration, and his views relating to voting rights.
  I think many of our colleagues, especially those who serve on the 
Judiciary Committee, feel the same way--that this wasn't personal, but 
we simply had a deep disagreement with some of his views on certain 
issues.
  Today I thought I would focus on the voting rights issue. I spoke 
earlier about the Violence Against Women Act, and I think that is a 
good place to start as we work together going forward. We have seen an 
attack on America's election system; we have had 17 intelligence 
agencies talking about the fact that a foreign country tried to 
influence our election. It is the core of our democracy. I know the 
Senator from Florida himself has said that this time it happened to one 
candidate, one party, and the next time it could be another party, 
another candidate. So this idea of voting--this idea of the freedom to 
vote--is the core of our democracy.
  One of the most important duties of the Justice Department--and that 
is the office for which the Attorney General would run--is safeguarding 
voters' access to the ballot box. This issue is important in my State. 
We had the highest voter turnout of any State in the country in this 
past election, and part of the reason we had such a good turnout is 
that we have good laws that allow for people to vote. It allows for 
same-day registration. We make it easy for people to vote; we don't 
make it hard. For me, that is one of the major duties of the Justice 
Department, and that is to enforce our voting rights.
  I will never forget when I traveled to Alabama in the last few years 
with one of the leaders, Congressman John Lewis, who was one of the 13 
original Freedom Riders. In 1964 he coordinated the efforts for the 
Mississippi Freedom Summit, recruiting college students from around the 
country to join the movement, to register African-American voters 
across the South. People from my State went, and people from every 
State in this Chamber went there for that March.
  On March 7, 1965, Congressman Lewis and 600 other peaceful protestors 
attempted to march from Selma to Birmingham to protest violence against 
civil rights workers. As they reached the crest of the Edmund Pettus 
Bridge, they saw a line of troopers blocking their way. At the end of 
the bridge, those peaceful marchers were attacked, just for calling for 
the right to vote. John Lewis's skull was fractured, and he still bears 
that scar to this day.
  The weekend that I went back there, 48 years after that bloody 
Sunday, was the weekend that the police chief of Montgomery actually 
handed Congressman Lewis a badge and publicly apologized for what 
happened to him that day, 48 years later. But as moving as that apology 
was, we still have a duty to make sure that those sacrifices were not 
in vain. We also need to make it easier for people to actually vote, 
and that is a promise still unmet in America over 50 years later, 
whether it is lines at voting booths or whether it is laws in place 
that make it harder to vote.
  I just look at this differently, having come from a high voter 
turnout State, a State where we have same-day registration, and when we 
look at the other high voter States that have that same-day 
registration station--Iowa, the Presiding Officer's State is one of 
them; that is not really a Democratic State, yet they have a high voter 
turnout and people participate and feel a part of that process. New 
Hampshire, Vermont, these States are truly split, but what we want to 
see is that kind of participation.

[[Page S860]]

  A couple of months after I was in Selma, the Supreme Court handed 
down its decision in the case of Shelby County v. Holder. In this 
decision, the Justices found that a formula in section 4 of the Voting 
Rights Act was unconstitutional. This formula was used to decide which 
States and localities needed to have Federal approval for any changes 
made to their voting rights laws, endangering the progress made over 
the past 50 years.
  According to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice, following 
the Shelby County decision, 14 States put new voting restrictions in 
place that impacted the 2016 Presidential election. Three other States 
also passed restrictive voting measures, but those laws were blocked by 
the courts. So the harm is very real and very serious, and we can't sit 
by and just let this happen.
  Specifically, we need a Department of Justice that will vigorously 
enforce the remaining sections of the Voting Rights Act as well as the 
National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act. 
Currently, a majority of the States are not complying with the National 
Voter Registration Act, leaving voting rolls outdated and preventing 
eligible voters from casting their ballots. Without a Department of 
Justice that makes the enforcement of these laws a priority, the rights 
of voters will continue to be infringed.
  Congress also needs to take action through legislation to make right 
what came out of that Supreme Court decision. Effectively throwing out 
the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act just doesn't make 
sense. As Justice Ginsberg put so well in her dissent, ``Ending 
preclearance now is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm 
because you are not getting wet.''
  Those marchers in Selma sacrificed too much for us not to fight back. 
That is why I cosponsored legislation last Congress that would amend 
the Voting Rights Act.
  I am under no illusion that amending the Voting Rights Act in 
Congress will be easy. It won't be. We have seen some bipartisan 
support. In fact, Congressman Sensenbrenner, from my neighboring State 
of Wisconsin, who sponsored the reauthorization in 2006, called for 
Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act. As he put it, ``the Voting 
Rights Act is vital to America's commitment to never again permit 
racial prejudices in the electoral process.''
  Another issue I want to focus on this evening that I raised in 
Senator Sessions' hearing is the fundamental importance of freedom of 
the press. My dad was a newspaper reporter, and up until a few years 
ago, he was still writing a blog. So I am especially sensitive to, and 
concerned about, maintaining the press's role as a watchdog.
  On a larger note, the role of journalists is critical to our Nation's 
democracy. That is why our Founders enshrined freedom of the press in 
the First Amendment. When we look at what we are seeing in the last few 
years in our country, what concerns me is this assault on democracy. We 
have voting rights issues with people unable to vote, with lines, with 
restrictive voting laws passed as opposed to finding ways to allow more 
people to vote. We have outside money in politics. Recently, we have 
some of the things being said about judges, and now we have some 
assault on this notion of the freedom of the press.
  Thomas Jefferson said that our first objective should be to leave 
open ``all avenues to truth,'' and the most effective way of doing that 
is through ``the freedom of press.'' This is still true today. Freedom 
of the press is the best avenue to truth. In fact, these values are 
more important now than ever, at a time when people are not exactly 
valuing the freedom of the press.
  I believe there are two distinct roles journalists will hold that 
Congress must preserve and strengthen in the coming years. The first is 
providing the people with information about their government. Sometimes 
this is as simple as covering the passage of a new law in a public 
forum. This work doesn't just lead to a better, informed public. It can 
also lead to important actions.
  Thanks to excellent reporting from across the country, Americans have 
been energized in the past. For instance, just a few weeks ago there 
was an attempt to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics over in the 
House. That came out, people were outraged, it was reported on, and 
they backed down.
  The second role we must preserve is journalists' responsibility to be 
fact-checkers. They research, they provide context, and, when they need 
to, they correct. We need newspapers and media to stand up for what is 
true and what is factual. Unlike what was recently said--not in this 
Chamber--the press cannot simply keep its mouth shut. The American 
people deserve the truth, and we are all relying on journalists to keep 
digging for it. I take this personally and seriously.
  In Senator Sessions' hearing I asked him whether he would follow the 
standards now in place at the Justice Department, which address when 
Federal prosecutors can subpoena journalists or their records and serve 
to protect reporters engaged in news-gathering activities. The previous 
two Attorneys General both pledged not to put reporters in jail if they 
were simply doing their job under the law.
  The Senator from Alabama did not make that commitment. When I asked 
him about this in his hearing, he said he had not yet studied those 
rules. He also did not make a commitment when I later asked him to do 
that on the record.
  The Senator from Alabama has also raised concerns in the past about 
protecting journalists from revealing their sources, including opposing 
the Free Flow of Information Act when it was considered by the 
Judiciary Committee in 2007, 2009, and 2013. So at this time, when our 
freedom of the press has been under attack at the highest levels of 
government, I believe it is critically important that our Justice 
Department continues to function as an independent voice that will 
protect the ability of journalists to do their job.
  Lastly, I want to take a moment to focus on the importance of the 
Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice. As ranking member of 
the Antitrust Subcommittee, I am concerned about the state of 
competition in the marketplace. I wish to take a few minutes on this 
issue.
  I did ask Senator Sessions about this at his hearing, and he said he 
was committed to an independent division in the Justice Department and 
to continue that work without outside influence. I continue to believe 
that this issue will be important because of the massive amount of 
mergers we are seeing. The legal technicalities behind our antitrust 
laws will not be familiar to most Americans, but effective antitrust 
enforcement provides benefits we can all understand. When companies 
vigorously compete, they can offer consumers the lowest prices and the 
highest quality goods and services.
  Senator Sessions has stated that he will support the independence of 
that division, and I want to make clear how critical this is. It is 
absolutely essential that our next Attorney General enforces our 
antitrust laws fairly and vigorously, and that this person protects the 
integrity of the Antitrust Division's prosecutorial function from 
inappropriate influence. This is because vigilant antitrust enforcement 
means more money in the pockets of American consumers. The Attorney 
General can do this by identifying and preventing competition problems 
before they occur, like stopping a merger that would allow a few 
dominant players to raise prices, or, when a merger is allowed to move 
forward, putting conditions in place to protect competition.
  The next Attorney General will also be able to stop price-fixing 
cartels that hurt consumers by artificially inflating prices for goods 
such as auto parts, TVs, and tablet computers. Last year alone, the 
Justice Department obtained more than $1 billion in criminal antitrust 
fines. Anticompetitive practices have serious impacts on consumers; for 
example, pay-for-delay settlements that keep cheaper generic drugs from 
coming onto the markets. Estimates suggest that eliminating those 
sweetheart deals would generate over $2.9 billion in budget savings 
over 10 years and save American consumers billions on their 
prescription drug costs. That is why Senator Grassley and I worked on 
bipartisan legislation to give the Federal Trade Commission greater 
ability to block those anticompetitive agreements. Our Preserve Access 
to Affordable Generics Act would increase consumers' access to cost-
saving generic drugs.

[[Page S861]]

  The bottom line is this. Antitrust enforcement is needed now more 
than ever. We are experiencing a wave of concentration across 
industries. Just last year, then-Assistant Attorney General for 
Antitrust Division Bill Baer, a lifelong antitrust practitioner, said 
his agency was reviewing deals with such antitrust concerns that they 
should never have made it out of the corporate boardroom.
  Not only will antitrust violations mean higher prices for Americans 
and less innovation, but the indirect effects are equally troubling. 
There is concern that undue concentration of economic power would 
exacerbate income inequality. There is also concern that concentration 
can hurt new businesses, stifling innovation. Why would you innovate if 
there is just one or two firms? Only effective antitrust enforcement by 
the Attorney General will prevent those harms, and effective 
enforcement can occur only if the Department of Justice makes 
enforcement decisions based on the merits of the individual case, 
rather than politics.
  Traditionally, the White House has not interfered with antitrust 
enforcement decisions, but recent reports indicate that the President 
has discussed pending mergers with CEOs during ongoing antitrust 
reviews. Some companies have also publicly reported their conversations 
with and their commitments to the President. In both Senator Sessions' 
hearing and in a follow up letter, I raised this issue with him. The 
Senator from Alabama said: ``It would be improper to consider any 
political, personal, or other non-legal basis in reaching an 
enforcement decision.''
  That is the correct answer. I plan to rigorously protect the 
Antitrust Division's prosecutorial integrity to make sure it is 
principled and is done right. Antitrust and competition policy are not 
Republican or Democratic issues. A merger in the ag industry could have 
an effect on farmers in Iowa, as the Presiding Officer knows. These are 
consumer issues, and these issues could not be more important to all 
Americans. We can all agree that robust competition is essential to our 
free-market economy and critical to ensuring that consumers pay the 
best prices for what they need.
  I want to switch gears and conclude today by speaking about the 
President's Executive order regarding refugees, especially those from 
Muslim countries, which has caused so much chaos across our country 
over the past several weeks.
  While I know Senator Sessions was not involved in writing the 
Executive order, it is very important that going forward, obviously, 
the Attorney General and the Department of Justice's Office of Legal 
Counsel have a responsibility to review Presidential Executive orders 
and assure they are legal and done right.
  I sent a letter, with Senators Durbin, Whitehouse, Franken, Coons, 
and Blumenthal, and we asked Senator Sessions what he would have done 
if the President's Executive order came across his desk. As a former 
prosecutor, I have long advocated for thorough vetting and supported 
strong national security measures.
  I believe that the No. 1 priority should be making people safe. While 
working to strengthen biometrics and other security measures is a good 
goal, this is not the way our government should work--that an order 
should be put out there without properly vetting it and figuring out 
the effect it would have on a four-year-old girl who is in a refugee 
camp in Uganda. That happened.
  In my State, there was a mom who had two children, a Somali mother in 
a refugee camp. She got permission to come over to our State and to our 
country as a refugee. But she was pregnant, and when she had that baby, 
that baby did not have permission to come with her. So she had a 
Sophie's choice: Does she leave the baby in the refugee camp with 
friends and go to America with her two other daughters, or do all of 
them stay in the refugee camp in Uganda? She made a decision that she 
would go with her two older girls, that that would be the safest thing 
for them.
  For 4 years, she worked to get the child that was left behind in the 
refugee camp to America to be reunited with her sisters. The baby, who 
is now 4 years old, was to get on a plane on the Monday after the 
President's Executive order was issued. The 4-year-old could not get on 
that plane.
  Senator Franken and I got involved. We talked to General Kelly. He 
was more than generous with his time. They made an exception, and the 
4-year-old is now in Minnesota. But it should not take a Senator's 
intervention--as many of my colleagues know that have worked on these 
cases--to get a 4-year-old who is supposed to be reunited with their 
family, something that our government had worked on for 4 years and 
Lutheran Social Services in Minnesota had worked on for 4 years.
  If Senator Sessions is in fact confirmed as the next Attorney 
General, these are actual issues he is going to have to work on, and 
beyond that, we have the issue of how people in our country are afraid.
  We have 100,000 Somalis in Minnesota. We have the biggest Somali 
population in the country. A man who works for me started with my 
office 10 years ago and has been our outreach to the Somali community. 
He was just elected to the school board.
  We have Somalis elected to our city council. They are part of the 
fabric of life in our State. Congressman Emmer, who actually took the 
seat held by Michele Bachmann, is the cochair, along with Congressman 
Ellison, of the Somali caucus in the House of Representatives. We have 
not seen this as a Democratic issue or a Republican issue in our State. 
We have welcomed these refugees.
  We have the second biggest population of Hmong in the United States 
of America. We have the biggest Liberian population. We have one of the 
biggest populations of people from Burma. We have 17 Fortune 500 
companies in our State. When these refugees come over, they are legal 
workers, and they are a major part of our economy. So it is no surprise 
that during the last year, when we heard the kind of rhetoric that we 
have heard, people have been concerned--not just the refugees 
themselves, not just their friends and family, but a lot of people in 
our State. The churches have gotten involved--all kinds and every 
denomination in our State--to stand up for our Muslim population. Why? 
Because they have all heard the story. One of my most memorable stories 
was from a family whom I heard about when I was visiting with some of 
our Muslim population in Minneapolis. This was a story of two adults 
who actually had been in our State during 9/11. And during 9/11, George 
Bush stood up and he said: This isn't about a religion. This is about 
evil people who did evil things, but it is not to indict a religion.

  His U.S. attorney at the time, the Republican U.S. attorney, went 
around with me--the elected prosecutor for the biggest county in our 
State--and we met with the Muslim population and assured them they were 
safe and told them to report hate crimes. The family, these two adults, 
they were there then. Nothing bad happened to them. No one called them 
a name.
  Fast-forward to this summer. They are at a restaurant with their two 
little children. They are just sitting there having dinner.
  A guy walks by and says: You four go home. You go home to where you 
came from.
  The little girl looked up at her mom, and she said: Mom, I don't want 
to go home and eat tonight. You said we could eat out tonight.
  The words of an innocent child. She didn't even know what that man 
was talking about because she only knows one home. That home is our 
State, and that home is the United States of America.
  If Senator Sessions is confirmed for this position, he is going to 
have an obligation to that little girl who was in that restaurant and 
to all of the people in our country because this is the Justice 
Department of the United States of America.
  As a former prosecutor, I know a big part of that job is prosecuting 
cases and doing all we can to keep America safe from evildoers, but it 
is also about keeping our Constitution and our rights safe.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, the Attorney General of the United 
States holds a vital and also somewhat unique position in the Federal 
Government. The Attorney General of the United States is tasked with

[[Page S862]]

significant responsibilities that must be executed independently, 
sometimes even in defiance of the White House's wishes and interests.
  The Attorney General of the United States is tasked with enforcing 
our laws fairly, justly, and evenhandedly, as well as with protecting 
the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans of all 
persuasions, of all backgrounds. The Attorney General of the United 
States does not work for the President so much as for the people and 
does not serve the administration so much as the law.
  I have served in the U.S. Department of Justice. I have felt its 
esprit de corps, its pride. That pride is founded on a firm sense of 
the Department's willingness to stand on what is right, even against 
the wishes of the White House. One fine example of this was Attorney 
General Ashcroft challenging and refusing to accede to the wishes of 
the White House on the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping of 
Americans. The Department of Justice is well aware of the importance of 
its independence.
  A successful Attorney General must be stalwart in protecting the 
Department from political meddling by the administration or by 
Congress. We need only look back to Attorney General Gonzales's 
resignation to recall how badly things turn out when an Attorney 
General yields to political pressure.
  An Attorney General also makes policy decisions about where and how 
to direct the Department's $27 billion budget and when and how to 
advise Congress to recommend new laws and modify existing policies. 
These are policy choices an Attorney General makes. It is no answer to 
questions about those policy choices to say: I will follow the law. 
That doesn't apply in this arena of funding decisions and legislative 
recommendations that are policy choices not dictated by law. Those 
policy choices can have a profound effect on individuals, on 
communities, and on the fabric of our Nations.
  Americans should be able to trust that their Attorney General will 
not only enforce the laws with integrity and impartiality but stand up 
for Americans of all stripes and fight on behalf of their rights. That 
is the prism through which I evaluate Senator Sessions' nomination.
  I have known Senator Sessions for a decade and have enjoyed working 
with him on a number of pieces of legislation. However, the standard by 
which I evaluate an Attorney General nominee is whether Rhode Islanders 
will trust that in the tough clinches, he will always be independent 
and always fair.
  I have reviewed Senator Sessions' career as an attorney and as a 
Senator, as well as his testimony before the Judiciary Committee. I 
have reflected on my own duties and experience as my State's attorney 
general and as the U.S. attorney in Rhode Island. I have also served as 
an attorney in our State attorney general's office.
  By the way, the attorney general in Rhode Island has full prosecutive 
authority. Many States have a division in which the attorney general 
has a narrow ambit of authority and district attorneys do the bulk of 
the criminal prosecution--not so in Rhode Island.
  I have also had the occasion to listen closely to very strong and 
honest, serious concerns from Rhode Islanders who have made it plain to 
me that they fear what Senator Sessions would do as head of the Justice 
Department. For every constituent of mine who has expressed support of 
his nomination, 15 have expressed opposition.
  Senator Sessions has fought against fixing our immigration system, 
opposing as the leading opponent of bipartisan legislation which, had 
it passed, would have spared us much of the current debate over walls 
     and immigration.
  Senator Sessions fought against our bipartisan criminal justice and 
sentencing reform bill.
  Senator Sessions opposed reauthorizing the Violence Against Women 
Act--a bill which is vitally important to the Rhode Island Department 
of Attorney General and to the anti-domestic violence groups around 
Rhode Island.
  Senator Sessions' record on support of gay and lesbian Americans has 
alarmed many Rhode Islanders. Public statements and confirmation 
testimony by Senator Sessions suggest that he brings a religious 
preference to the Department and that what he calls secular attorneys 
would be, to him, suspect compared to Christian attorneys. That 
distinction between a secular attorney and a religious attorney is one 
that runs counter to very solid principles upon which my State was 
founded. Roger Williams brought to us freedom of conscience.
  Senator Sessions has called Breitbart News a bright spot. I must 
disagree. Breitbart News is not, to me, a bright spot. Breitbart has 
published baseless and inflammatory articles with titles like ``Birth 
Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.''
  In fairness, I should disclose that Senator Sessions' nomination 
carries an additional burden with me as the nominee of this President 
and this White House. The need for an independent Attorney General has 
rarely, if ever, been greater.
  On the campaign trail, the American people witnessed Donald Trump 
glorify sexual misconduct, mock a disabled reporter, and make 
disparaging remarks about immigrants and minorities. We all witnessed 
chants at Trump rallies of ``lock her up.'' At his confirmation 
hearings, Senator Sessions excused these as ``humorously done.'' In 
mass rallies that also featured people getting beaten and the press 
caged and vilified, this didn't seem very humorous to many Americans. I 
think Americans know that the good guys in the movie are not the ones 
in the mob; the good guy is the lawman who stands on the jailhouse 
porch and sends the mob home. To me, that ``lock her up'' chant was un-
American. I believe that across the country it made honest prosecutors' 
stomachs turn.
  Not surprisingly, many Americans are fearful of what the Trump 
administration will mean for them, for their families, and for their 
country.
  The problems with this President did not end with the campaign. 
President Trump and his family have brought more conflicts of interest 
to the White House than all other modern Presidents and families 
combined. The proposed Trump domestic Cabinet is an unprecedented swamp 
of conflicts of interest, failures of disclosure and divestment, and 
dark money secrets. We have not even been permitted, in the course of 
our nomination advice-and-consent process, to explore the full depth of 
that unprecedented swamp because the dark money operations of nominees 
have been kept from us. In one case, thousands of emails are still 
covered up. The Trump White House traffics in alternative facts, 
operates vindictively, and is a haven for special interest influence. 
None of this is good. All of this suggests that there will be more or 
less constant occasion for investigation and even prosecution of this 
administration.
  Independence is at a premium. Nothing could have made this more clear 
than the first disagreement between the Trump White House and the 
Department of Justice, whose outcome was that the Acting Attorney 
General--a woman with 30 years' experience in the Department, a career 
prosecutor, former assistant U.S. attorney, former U.S. attorney, and 
someone recognized for her leadership throughout the Department--was 
summarily fired.

  This is also not a good sign. In recent history, Attorneys General 
Gonzales, Meese, and Mitchell were politically close to their 
Presidents, and the Gonzales, Meese, and Mitchell tenures did not end 
well.
  Attorney General Mitchell worked for President Nixon. They met when 
their New York law firms merged in the early 1970s, and they became law 
partners. John Mitchell was the campaign manager for Nixon's 1968 
Presidential campaign. There were signs that things weren't quite right 
because when Nixon nominated Mitchell to be his Attorney General, he 
appealed directly to FBI Director Hoover not to conduct the usual 
background check. Mitchell ultimately resigned as Attorney General in 
order to run President Nixon's reelection campaign. So the political 
link between Mitchell and Nixon was very close, and sure enough, 
scandal ensued. Attorney General Mitchell turned out to be a central 
figure of the Watergate scandal. As the chairman of the reelection 
committee, the famous CREEP, Mitchell was responsible for appointing G. 
Gordon Liddy and approving the dirty tricks program while still 
Attorney General.
  That dirty tricks program ultimately included breaking into national 
Democratic headquarters in the Watergate.

[[Page S863]]

The upshot of this was that Mitchell was charged with conspiracy, 
obstruction of justice, and three counts of perjury. He was convicted 
on all counts, and he served 19 months in prison.
  Attorney General Edwin Meese was also very close to President Reagan. 
Meese joined the 1980 Reagan Presidential campaign as Chief of Staff. 
He ran the day-to-day campaign operations and was the senior issues 
adviser. After the election, Edwin Meese was given the job of leading 
the Reagan transition, and once in office, Reagan appointed Meese as 
Counselor to the President. According to press accounts at the time, 
Meese was known as someone who ``has known the President so long and so 
well, he has become almost an alter ego of Ronald Reagan.'' That was 
the political background between Meese and President Reagan.
  Again, it did not end well. Meese came under scrutiny for his role in 
the Iran-Contra scandal. The congressional committee that reported on 
the Iran-Contra scandal in November 1987 determined that Meese had 
failed to take appropriate steps to prevent members of the 
administration from destroying critical evidence. An independent 
counsel named Lawrence Walsh finished a report in 1993 that stated that 
Meese had made a false statement when he said Reagan had not known 
about the 1985 Iran-Contra deal. Iran-Contra was not the only 
controversy that plagued Attorney General Meese. A company called 
Wedtech Corporation was seeking Department of Defense contracts in the 
early 1980s. The company hired Meese's former law school classmate and 
his personal attorney, a lawyer named E. Robert Wallach, to lobby the 
Reagan administration on its behalf. Attorney General Meese helped 
Wedtech at Wallach's urging get a special hearing on a $32 million Army 
engine contract, although the Army considered the company unqualified. 
Well, the contract was awarded to Wedtech, and then one of Meese's top 
deputies went to work for Wedtech.
  The Federal criminal investigation that resulted led to the 
conviction of E. Robert Wallach, the former law school classmate and 
personal attorney of Meese, for whom he had set up the meetings with 
the government.
  Independent counsel James McKay investigated the Wedtech contract, 
including investigating allegations of misconduct by Meese. While Meese 
was never convicted, he resigned following the issuance of the 
independent counsel's 800-page report.
  Third is Attorney General Gonzales. Attorney General Gonzales was 
close to then-Governor Bush in Texas. He was his general counsel. When 
Governor Bush became President Bush, Gonzales came to Washington to 
serve as White House Counsel. He was appointed Attorney General in 
2005. During his tenure at the Department of Justice, there were 
multiple investigations, many of which played out before the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, involving the Warrantless Wiretapping Program, the 
U.S. attorney's scandal, and inquiries into the Department's management 
of the torture program legal opinions.
  Ultimately, Members of both Houses of Congress called for Attorney 
General Gonzales's resignation--or demanded that he be fired by the 
President--and Attorney General Gonzales resigned.
  There is a track record here of Attorneys General who are politically 
close to a President coming into harm's way and doing poorly in the 
Department. One particular office that is vulnerable to this kind of 
undue proximity, and failure of independence, is a body in the 
Department of Justice called the Office of Legal Counsel. Jack 
Goldsmith, a former head of the Office of Legal Counsel--and a 
Republican, by the way--testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee 
that ``more than any other institution inside the executive branch, OLC 
is supposed to provide detached, apolitical legal advice.'' And it has 
an honorable tradition of providing such advice to a remarkable degree, 
but under the Bush administration, the OLC departed from that 
tradition. It came up in a number of ways. The first was during our 
investigation into President Bush's Warrantless Wiretapping Program.
  When Office of Legal Counsel memos supporting the program came to 
light, I plowed through a fat stack of those classified opinions that 
were held in secret over at the White House and pressed to have some of 
the statements declassified. Here are some of the statements that were 
declassified found in those OLC opinions:

       An Executive order cannot limit a President. There is no 
     constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new 
     Executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms 
     of a previous Executive order.

  So this means a President could issue an Executive order, have it 
published in the Federal Register, put it forward as the policy of the 
administration--a direction to all the attorneys in the 
administration--and then secretly depart from it without ever changing 
what the public is told about the policy. A theory like this allows the 
Federal Register, where these Executive orders are assembled, to become 
a screen of falsehood, behind which illegal programs can operate in 
violation of the very Executive order that purports to control the 
executive branch. That was just one.
  Another one I will quote: ``The President exercising his 
constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an 
action is a lawful exercise of the President's authority under Article 
II.''
  If that sounds a little bit like pulling yourself up by your own 
bootstraps, well, it sounds that way to me, too, and it runs contrary 
to a fairly basic constitutional principle announced in the famous case 
of Marbury v. Madison--which every law student knows--which says: ``It 
is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the 
law is.''
  A third example--and this is another quote from an OLC opinion: ``The 
Department of Justice is bound by the President's legal [opinions.]''
  Well, if that is true, what is the point of a President sending 
matters over to the Department of Justice for legal review? If the 
President did it, and it is therefore automatically legal, there would 
be no function to the Department of Justice accomplishing that legal 
review.
  So in this area of warrantless wiretapping, the Office of Legal 
Counsel within the Department of Justice came up with what seemed to be 
quite remarkable theories in the privacy and secrecy of that office, in 
those classified opinions that are really hard to justify in the broad 
light of day. That is why independence matters so much. Obviously, the 
White House wanted those opinions to say what they said, but in the 
clear light of day, they don't hold up.
  Let us move on from the warrantless wiretapping opinions of the Bush 
Department of Justice to the OLC opinions that the Bush administration 
used to authorize waterboarding of detainees. Again, I was one of the 
first Senators to review the OLC opinions, and when I read them, I will 
say I was quite surprised. I was surprised not just by what they said 
but by what they didn't say. One thing that was entirely omitted was 
the history of waterboarding. Waterboarding was used by the Spanish 
Inquisition, by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, by the French-suppressing 
revolts in Algeria, by the Japanese in World War II, and by military 
dictatorships in Latin America. The technique, as we know, ordinarily 
involves strapping a captive in a reclining position, heels overhead, 
putting a cloth over his face, and pouring water over the cloth to 
create the impression of drowning. Senator John McCain, held captive 
for more than 5 years by the North Vietnamese, said this of 
waterboarding:

       It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture.

  American prosecutors and American judges in military tribunals after 
World War II prosecuted Japanese soldiers for war crimes for torture on 
the evidence of their waterboarding American prisoners of war. None of 
that history appeared in the Office of Legal Counsel opinion.
  The other major thing the Office of Legal Counsel overlooked was a 
case involving a Texas sheriff who was prosecuted as a criminal for 
waterboarding prisoners in 1984. Let's start with the fact that this 
was a case that was brought by the Department of Justice. It was the 
U.S. attorney for that district who prosecuted the sheriff. The 
Department of Justice won the case at trial.
  The case went up on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth 
Circuit, the court one level below the U.S. Supreme Court. In its 
appellate decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the

[[Page S864]]

Fifth Circuit described the technique as ``water torture.''
  All a legal researcher had to do was to type the words ``water'' and 
``torture'' into the legal search engines Lexis or Westlaw, and this 
case would come up: United States v. Lee. You can find it at 744 F2d 
1124.
  Over and over in that published appellate opinion by the second 
highest level of court in the Federal judiciary, they described the 
technique as torture. Yet the Office of Legal Counsel never mentioned 
this case in their decision.
  Ordinarily, what a proper lawyer is supposed to do, if they find 
adverse precedent--i.e., decisions that appear to come down a different 
way than the argument the lawyer is making--is they report the decision 
to the court, and then they try to distinguish it, they try to convince 
the judge they are before why that case was either wrongly decided or 
does not apply on the facts of their case. But the Office of Legal 
Counsel did not offer any effort to distinguish the Fifth Circuit 
decision; it simply pretended it did not exist or it never found it. It 
is hard to know which is worse.
  At sentencing in the Lee case, the district judge admonished the 
former sheriff who had been found guilty of waterboarding: ``The 
operation down there would embarrass the dictator of a country.''
  Well, it is also pretty embarrassing when what is supposed to be the 
institution inside the executive branch that is supposed to provide 
detached, apolitical legal advice in an honorable tradition of 
providing such advice, to a remarkable degree, to quote Professor 
Goldsmith, misses a case so clearly on point.
  That was not the only OLC error. In addition to the warrantless 
wiretapping statements, in addition to the Office of Legal Counsel 
opinions on waterboarding, they undertook a review of the Foreign 
Intelligence Surveillance Act.
  In the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is something called an 
exclusivity provision. It says this: The Foreign Intelligence 
Surveillance Act ``shall be the exclusive means by which electronic 
surveillance and the interception of domestic wire, oral and electronic 
communications may be conducted.'' Shall be the exclusive means. Seems 
pretty clear. But the Office of Legal Counsel said about that 
language--I quote them here: Unless Congress made a clear statement in 
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that it sought to restrict 
Presidential authority to conduct wireless searches in the national 
security area, which it has not, then the statute must be construed to 
avoid such a reading--which it has not.
  Congress said that this shall be the exclusive means. If the OLC was 
not happy reading the language of the statute, they could go to a court 
where this language had already been construed. The decision was called 
United States v. Andonian, and the judge in that case ruled that this 
language, the exclusivity clause--I am quoting the court's decision--
``reveals that Congress intended to sew up the perceived loopholes 
through which the President had been able to avoid the warrant 
requirement.''
  The exclusivity clause makes it impossible for the President to opt 
out of the legislative scheme by retreating to his inherent executive 
sovereignty over foreign affairs. The exclusivity clause assures that 
the President cannot avoid Congress's limitations by resorting to 
inherent powers.
  In the face of that case law, the Office of Legal Counsel held that 
Congress had not said what it said and this was not exclusive language, 
even though a court had said so.
  The reason I share those three stories is because it really matters 
in important issues when the Department of Justice has the capability 
and the courage to stand up to the President. It really matters when 
they get it wrong. It really matters when they say things that simply 
are not correct or legally sound in order to support a warrantless 
wiretapping program. It really matters when they don't find the case on 
point to evaluate whether waterboarding is torture. It really matters 
when they go around a clear congressional statute which a judge has 
said closes the door to going around that statute by simply saying 
privately: Well, that door is not actually closed. It matters.

  I have insufficient confidence that as Attorney General, Senator 
Sessions will be able to stand up to the kind of pressure we can expect 
this White House to bring. We know that this White House operates 
vindictively and likes to push people around.
  We found out recently that Mr. Bannon went running over to see 
General Kelly to tell him to undo the green card waiver of the Muslim 
ban. Thankfully General Kelly refused and stuck by his duty. But this 
is the kind of White House we have, where they try to push people 
around to do the wrong thing.
  They are so contemptuous of authority outside their own that they are 
willing to attack a Federal judge who disagrees with them, calling him 
a ``so-called judge.'' They are willing to fire an Acting Attorney 
General who disagrees with them, firing her summarily and accusing her 
of betrayal. The pressure this White House can be expected to bring on 
the Department of Justice to conform itself not to the law but to the 
political demands of the President is going to be intense.
  Moreover, the conflicts of interest that crawl through this White 
House and that crawl over this swamp Cabinet offer every reasonable 
cause to believe that there will have to be investigations and 
prosecutions into this administration.
  That combination of a target-rich environment in this administration 
for investigation and prosecution with a vindictive White House that 
does not hesitate to try to bully officials into conformity calls for 
the highest degree of independence. I do not feel Senator Sessions 
makes that standard. He was too close to the President during the 
political race. He has not stood up against any of those excesses I 
have mentioned since then. It is with regret that I must say I will not 
be able to vote to confirm him.
  One of the reasons I became a lawyer was because of ``To Kill a 
Mocking Bird.'' As a kid, I just loved Atticus Finch. He is great in 
the movie. He is even better in the book. Some of the things that 
Atticus Finch says about the law and about human nature are so brave 
and so profound that from the first time I read that book, boy, I would 
love to have been Atticus Finch. I would love to have had the chance to 
stand in the breach when everyone was against you and stick up for 
doing something that was right. Gosh, that felt so great.
  Like the scene in many movies, the hero is not a part of the mob, not 
carrying a torch toward the jailhouse; the hero is the lonely lawman 
who sits on the porch and won't let the mob in. That is what I think we 
are going to need in our next Attorney General.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I will be speaking later tonight, perhaps 
about 2 o'clock, possibly on through 4 o'clock, but I wanted to take a 
few moments now and share some of the letter that was discussed earlier 
and share it in a fashion that is appropriate under our rules. I would 
like to thank very much my colleague from New Jersey for yielding a few 
minutes in order to do so.
  I think it is important for us to understand the context of what this 
letter was all about. This letter was a statement of Coretta Scott 
King, and it was dated Thursday, March 13, 1986. She noted: ``My 
longstanding commitment which I shared with my husband Martin''--of 
course that is Martin Luther King--``to protect and enhance the rights 
of black Americans, rights which include equal access to the Democratic 
process, tells me to testify today.'' Then in her letter she goes on to 
essentially present an essay about the essential role of voting rights 
in our country, and so I will continue to read in that regard. She 
says:

       The Voting Rights Act was and still is vitally important to 
     the future of democracy in the United States. I was 
     privileged to join Martin and many others during the Selma to 
     Montgomery march for voting rights in 1965. Martin was 
     particularly impressed by the determination to get the 
     franchise of blacks in Selma and neighboring Perry County. As 
     he wrote--

  Now she is quoting Martin Luther King--

       ``Certainly no community in the history of the negro 
     struggle has responded with the enthusiasm of Selma and her 
     neighboring

[[Page S865]]

     town of Marion. Where Birmingham depended largely upon 
     students and unemployed adults to participate in nonviolent 
     protests of the denial of the franchise, Selma has involved 
     fully 10 percent of the negro population in active 
     demonstrations and at least half the negro population of 
     Marion was arrested on 1 day.''

  That was the end of the quote from her husband. She continued 
writing:

       Martin was referring, of course, to a group that included 
     the defendants recently prosecuted for assisting elderly and 
     illiterate blacks to exercise that franchise.
  Each time she refers to franchise, she is referring to this 
fundamental right to vote under our Constitution.
  And she continued:

       In fact, Martin anticipated from the depth of their 
     commitment 20 years ago, that a united political organization 
     would remain in Perry County long after the other marchers 
     had left. This organization, the Perry County Civic League, 
     started by Mr. Turner, Mr. Hogue, and others, as Martin 
     predicted, continued ``to direct the drive for votes and 
     other rights.''

  That is a quote from her husband. And then she continued. In this 
letter, she says:

       In the years since the Voting Rights Act was passed, Black 
     Americans in Marion, Selma, and elsewhere have made important 
     strides in their struggle to participate actively in the 
     electoral process. The number of Blacks registered to vote in 
     key Southern states has doubled [she said] since 1965. This 
     would not have been possible without the Voting Rights Act.

  She continues in her essay. She says:

       However, Blacks still fall far short of having equal 
     participation in the electoral process. Particularly in the 
     South, efforts continue to be made to deny Blacks access to 
     the polls, even where Blacks constitute the majority of the 
     voters. It has been a long up-hill struggle to keep alive the 
     vital legislation that protects the most fundamental right to 
     vote. A person who has exhibited so much hostility to the 
     enforcement of those laws, and thus, to the exercise of those 
     rights by Black people should not be elevated to the federal 
     bench.

  She continues in her letter to note:

       Twenty years ago, when we marched from Selma to Montgomery, 
     the fear of voting was real, as the broken bones and bloody 
     heads in Selma and Marion bore witness. As my husband wrote 
     at the time, ``it was not just a sick imagination that 
     conjured up the vision of a public official sworn to uphold 
     the law, who forced an inhuman march upon hundreds of Negro 
     children; who ordered the Rev. James Bevel to be chained to 
     his sickbed; who clubbed a Negro woman registrant, and who 
     callously inflicted repeated brutalities and indignities upon 
     nonviolent Negroes peacefully petitioning for their 
     constitutional right to vote.

  This is what Martin Luther King is referring to was the specific 
actions of sheriffs in the South who were representing the law. And 
then Coretta Scott King continued:

       Free exercise of voting rights is so fundamental to 
     American democracy that we cannot tolerate any form of 
     infringement of those rights. Of all the groups who have been 
     disenfranchised in our nation's history, none has struggled 
     longer or suffered more in the attempt to win the vote than 
     Black citizens. No group has had access to the ballot box 
     denied so persistently and intently.
       Over the past century, a broad array of schemes have been 
     used in attempts to block the Black vote. The range of 
     techniques developed with the purpose of repressing black 
     voting rights run the gamut from the straightforward 
     application of brutality against black citizens who tried to 
     vote, to such legalized frauds as ``grandfather clause'' 
     exclusions and rigged literacy tests.

  Now she proceeds to note that other techniques were used to 
intimidate Black voters and that included investigations into the 
absentee voting process, and this concerned her a great deal. And she 
notes that Whites have been using the absentee process to their 
advantage for years without incident. Then, when Blacks, realizing its 
strength, began to use it with success, criminal investigations were 
begun.
  Then she proceeds to address that there were occasions where 
individuals with legal authority chose to initiate cases specifically 
against African Americans while ignoring allegations of similar 
behavior by Whites, ``choosing instead to chill the exercise of the 
franchise by Blacks by his misguided investigation.''
  Let me continue later in the letter. She addresses her concern over 
the prosecution illegally withholding from the defense critical 
statements made by witnesses and that witnesses who did testify were 
pressured and intimidated into submitting the ``correct'' testimony. 
That is incorrect testimony.

       Many elderly Blacks were visited multiple times by the FBI 
     who then hauled them over 180 miles by bus to a grand jury in 
     Mobile when they could have more easily testified at a grand 
     jury twenty miles away in Selma. These voters, and others, 
     have announced they are now never going to vote again.

  She obviously is addressing issue after issue that affected the Black 
franchise, the franchise of African Americans, the ability to vote, and 
then she returns to her essay about how important this is.

       The exercise of the franchise is an essential means by 
     which our citizens ensure that those who are governing will 
     be responsible. My husband called it the number one civil 
     right. The denial of access to the ballot box ultimately 
     results in the denial of other fundamental rights. For, it is 
     only when the poor and disadvantaged are empowered that they 
     are able to participate actively in the solutions to their 
     own problems.

  Coretta Scott King continues:

       We still have a long way to go before we can say that 
     minorities no longer need to be concerned about 
     discrimination at the polls. Blacks, Hispanics, Native 
     Americans and Asian Americans are grossly underrepresented at 
     every level of government in America. If we are going to make 
     our timeless dream of justice through democracy a reality, we 
     must take every possible step to ensure that the spirit and 
     intent of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fifteenth 
     Amendment of the Constitution is honored.
       The federal courts hold a unique position in our 
     constitutional system, ensuring that minorities and other 
     citizens without political power have a forum in which to 
     vindicate their rights. Because of this unique role, it is 
     essential that the people selected to be federal judges 
     respect the basic tenets of our legal system: respect for 
     individual rights and a commitment to equal justice for all.
       The integrity of the Courts, and thus the rights they 
     protect, can only be maintained if citizens feel confident 
     that those selected as federal judges will be able to judge 
     with fairness others holding differing views.

  And she concludes her letter having examined a number of incidents in 
the historical record with this conclusion:

       I do not believe Jefferson Sessions possesses the requisite 
     judgment, competence, and sensitivity to the rights 
     guaranteed by the federal civil rights laws to qualify for 
     appointment to the federal district court.

  And that is the context of her letter; that voting rights matter a 
tremendous amount. I applaud the efforts of my colleague from 
Massachusetts to make this point and share this essay with the body of 
the Senate earlier this evening.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. MERKLEY. I yield.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, may I ask the Senator, through the 
Chair, if the letter from which he just read has a date?
  Mr. MERKLEY. Well, the answer is that it does have a date, and that 
is Thursday, March 13, 1986.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. 1986. And is the Senator aware of the occasion that 
brought this letter to the Senate?
  Mr. MERKLEY. I am.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. What was that occasion?
  Mr. MERKLEY. That occasion was a hearing before the Senate Judiciary 
Committee regarding the potential appointment of the individual to the 
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. And this letter was made a matter of record in that 
hearing?
  Mr. MERKLEY. I do not know if it was made a matter of record.
  My impression initially was that she had read this letter at the 
hearing, but I am not sure if it was presented in person or as a 
document submitted to the committee.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. But clearly the content of this letter has been a 
matter known to the Senate and, depending on what the facts may show, 
may actually have been a record of the Senate for more than 30 years.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I believe that is probably correct.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. So a Senator of the United States has been accused of 
violating a rule of the Senate for restating to the Senate a phrase 
that has been a matter of record in the Senate--if, indeed, that is the 
case--for 30 years.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________