[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 28 (Wednesday, February 13, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1292-S1297]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Nomination of William Barr

  Mr. President, we are also going to be voting--perhaps today, maybe 
tomorrow--on the nomination of William Barr to serve as the next 
Attorney General of the United States. The role of Attorney General is 
unique in the President's Cabinet because while you are a political 
appointee of the President, you are also the Nation's chief law 
enforcement officer and, obviously, are obligated to put your highest 
loyalty in upholding the rule of law.
  I asked Mr. Barr about this unique role during his confirmation 
hearing. He told me that over the years he has received a number of 
calls from people who were being considered for appointment to the 
position of Attorney General. He told them that if they wanted to 
pursue any political future, they would be crazy to accept the job of 
Attorney General. He said: ``If you take this job, you have to be ready 
to make decisions and spend all your political capital and have no 
future because you have to have that freedom of action.'' He assured me 
that he is in a position now in his life where he can do what he needs 
to do without fear of any consequences.
  I was glad to hear that because I believe that is the most 
fundamental quality of an Attorney General. The Department of Justice 
must be able to operate above the political fray and

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prioritize the rule of law above all else, and to do that it needs a 
strong and principled leader like Bill Barr--particularly, on the heels 
of Loretta Lynch's and Eric Holder's administrations as Attorneys 
General of the United States during the Obama term of office, where we 
know that, unfortunately, politics pervaded the actions not only of the 
Department of Justice but also the FBI in things ranging from the 
Hillary Clinton email investigation to the counterintelligence 
investigation of some of the people associated with the Trump campaign.
  Of course, this isn't the only reason he is the right person for the 
job. We know that he can faithfully execute the duties of the office 
because he has done it before.
  More than two decades ago, President George Herbert Walker Bush 
recognized the talent in this promising young attorney and nominated 
him to three increasingly important positions in the Department of 
Justice. For all three positions, Assistant Attorney General for the 
Office of Legal Counsel, Deputy Attorney General, and, finally, 
Attorney General, he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. I would 
hope that he would be unanimously confirmed as Attorney General once 
again, but I have my doubts.
  After hearing Mr. Barr speak about his views of the role of Attorney 
General, I have no question as to why not a single Senator opposed his 
nomination during those three previous confirmation votes. He spoke of 
the importance of acting with professionalism and integrity, of 
ensuring that the character of the Department of Justice is maintained 
and can withstand even the most trying political times, and of serving 
with independence, providing no promises or assurances to anyone on 
anything other than faithfully administering the rule of law.
  When Mr. Barr was nominated for Attorney General the first time, 
then-Judiciary Chairman Joe Biden noted that Mr. Barr, a nominee from 
the opposing political party, would be a ``fine Attorney General.'' I 
agree, and I thank Mr. Barr for agreeing to serve, once again, this 
country in this critical position. I look forward to voting yes on his 
nomination.
  I would just add that I am saddened by the way the politics of the 
moment--the desire to defeat any legislation or oppose any nominee by 
this President--has led some of our colleagues across the aisle to 
oppose this nomination. I don't know whether it is out of fear of the 
most radical fringe of their political party or by their antipathy for 
this President, but it is regrettable.
  I do believe, however, that Mr. Barr will be confirmed, as he should 
be, as the next Attorney General of the United States. I look forward 
to casting a ``yes'' vote on that nomination.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
  Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, once again, I would like to respond to the 
Senator from Texas as he continues to hold the position that the 
Democrats on this side of the aisle simply oppose all of the 
President's nominees because they happen to be this lying President's 
nominees. That is not the case at all.
  Donald Trump has consistently thought to nominate people to his 
Cabinet who he believes will do his bidding and protect his interests. 
Once confirmed, if these Cabinet Secretaries displease him, out they 
go--Jeff Sessions, Jim Mattis, Rex Tillerson.
  The President believes William Barr will be an Attorney General who 
will protect him. Why does the President believe that? Because William 
Barr auditioned for this position. How? Mr. Barr wrote a highly unusual 
and factually unsupported, unsolicited 19-page memo to the Sessions 
Justice Department, arguing that Special Counsel Robert Mueller should 
not be permitted to interrogate the President about obstruction of 
justice. Nobody asked him to weigh in.
  He admits he didn't have any facts or inside information, and, in 
fact, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein chose not to discuss the 
matter with him, but Mr. Barr felt compelled not only to put his views 
in writing and send them to the Department of Justice, but he also made 
sure the President's lawyers knew his views. His memo sent a clear 
message to this President that he would protect Donald Trump from the 
Mueller probe.
  Once Donald Trump did nominate him for Attorney General, after having 
earlier offered him a job as his personal attorney--virtually the same 
job in Donald Trump's mind--Mr. Barr came to the Judiciary Committee 
and continued to signal his willingness to shield Trump from scrutiny.
  First, he refused to commit to follow the advice of career ethics 
officials on the question of recusal from the Trump investigations. He 
didn't want to make the same mistake Jeff Sessions did and open himself 
up to Presidential humiliation, no matter what the ethics experts 
recommended.
  Second, he refused to commit to make public Special Counsel Mueller's 
report. In both instances, he said he wanted to keep his options open, 
leave himself room to make his own decisions, and trust his ultimate 
judgment.
  While these answers were reassuring to the President, they certainly 
were not to those of us who want an Attorney General independent of a 
President who does not believe the rule of law applies to him. When 
asked at his hearing, Mr. Barr should have affirmatively committed to 
allowing all active investigations to continue until the prosecutors 
say they are done. That includes the special counsel's investigation, 
as well as the probes being conducted by, again, at least three U.S. 
attorney's offices. Instead, he gave his usual equivocal response.
  Of course, these are all active investigations having to do with Mr. 
Trump and his activities. Barr's position on these investigations is 
consistent with his views on the unitary Executive. He has long 
endorsed a view that the President is an all-powerful Executive, 
restrained by very little, least of all by Congress. This is a very 
dangerous view for the Attorney General to have, especially at a time 
when we have a President who attacks and undermines the rule of law.
  Mr. Barr's views on the Trump investigations and the unitary 
Executive aren't the only reason he should not be confirmed as Attorney 
General. His agreement with this administration's immigration policy 
also, in my view, disqualifies him. There was no daylight between 
Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions on immigration. Mr. Barr has given every 
indication that he will follow the lead of Jeff Sessions and of Matthew 
Whitaker in aggressively implementing, basically, Stephen Miller's 
extreme immigration policies.
  As George H.W. Bush's Attorney General, Barr played a key role in the 
Justice Department's policy in the early 1990s of detaining HIV-
positive Haitian refugees at Guantanamo Bay. These refugees were held 
in prison-like living conditions and denied medical treatment until a 
Federal court ruled that their indefinite detention was illegal.
  More recently, in November 2018, Mr. Barr cowrote an op-ed with the 
title ``We Salute Jeff Sessions,'' full of praise for Sessions' tenure 
at DOJ, including on immigration. Mr. Barr praised Sessions for 
``attack[ing] the rampant illegality that riddled our immigration 
system, breaking the record for prosecution of illegal-entry cases,'' 
and increasing prosecution of ``immigrants who reentered the country 
illegally'' by 38 percent.
  These statements are deeply concerning because as Attorney General, 
Mr. Sessions implemented policies that are abhorrent and in direct 
opposition to American values.
  Sessions instituted the zero-tolerance policy--a stain on our Nation 
that resulted in thousands of children being separated from their 
families, many of whom may never be reunited. This country, under Jeff 
Sessions, made instant orphans out of thousands of children. That is 
hardly a value that I think any of us can support.
  At his hearing, Mr. Barr also embraced key aspects of the Trump-
Miller immigration agenda, including endorsing Donald Trump's vanity 
wall; attacking cities that refused to undermine their own anti-crime 
efforts by cooperating with the Federal Government's draconian 
policies; agreeing with the Trump administration's atrocious treatment 
of legal asylum seekers; joining President Trump in criticizing judges 
for blocking the President's Muslim travel ban; and astoundingly, 
refusing to say whether birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the 
Constitution, telling me, when I asked him this, that he hadn't 
``looked at that legally.'' What is there to look at?

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The Fourteenth Amendment plainly states that all persons ``born or 
naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United 
States and of the State wherein they reside.'' Nullifying birthright 
citizenship would violate the Constitution and impact millions, but it 
is certainly something the President wants done.
  Mr. Barr's record and position on some of DOJ's other important 
responsibilities, such as enforcing civil rights laws, defending laws 
enacted by Congress, and protecting established constitutional rights, 
are unacceptable to me in the Nation's top law enforcement officer.
  Some examples include: Mr. Barr's refusal to admit that voter fraud 
is incredibly rare and his focusing on so-called voter fraud problems 
rather than voter suppression problems. States are very busy continuing 
to pass laws that should be attacked as a silly veiled effort at voter 
suppression, but that is not where Mr. Barr is; his stand that LGBTQ 
people are not protected from employment discrimination under Federal 
civil rights laws, contrary to what the Equal Employment Opportunity 
Commission and two Federal courts have held; his personal involvement 
in two challenges to major premises of the Affordable Care Act; his 
record of belief that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, including his 
statement that this landmark Supreme Court case guaranteeing a woman's 
right to choose, as he put it, was a ``secularist'' effort to 
``eliminate laws that reflect traditional norms.'' At a time when the 
newest Trump-appointed Justices on the Supreme Court have demonstrated 
a hostility toward a woman's constitutional right to an abortion, such 
an anti-choice Attorney General is a danger to women.
  In some of his academic writings, William Barr expressed his dismay 
at the moral decay of American society, but when I asked him at his 
hearing, he testified that he didn't have any problems with a President 
who lies every single day and has undermined so many of America's most 
important institutions such as the FBI, the Justice Department, and the 
intelligence community.
  An Attorney General is a member of the President's Cabinet and is 
entitled to enforce the administration's policies, but in this 
instance, the policies this President pursues are often pushed beyond 
the constitutional breaking point and just as often are plain cruel; 
i.e., the separation of children from their parents at the border, 
making them instant orphans.
  The Attorney General's independence is critical in normal times, but 
it is absolutely essential in these times that are anything but normal 
that his independence cannot be questioned. Sadly, I cannot say that.
  I cannot support William Barr's nomination. I urge my colleagues to 
vote against his confirmation.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lankford). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. What is the pending business before the Senate?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Barr nomination is pending before the 
Senate.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the nomination of 
William Barr to be the next Attorney General of the United States.
  Mr. Barr has an admirable record of public service in his career. He 
has dramatically more qualifications and experience than many of his 
predecessors and, certainly, the Acting Attorney General. We can see he 
brings more experience to the job.
  I respect Mr. Barr and his family. I have told him as much to his 
face. He has a wonderful family, and he brought them with him to the 
hearing, and many of them have chosen public service careers, as he 
has.
  I carefully reviewed his record, trying to consider him in not only 
the context of this awesome responsibility of being Attorney General, 
but at this awesome moment in history.
  When it comes to the ongoing investigation of President Trump's 
campaign by Robert Mueller, I fear that Mr. Barr has said and done 
things that raise questions about his objectivity. He has clearly 
indicated to President Donald Trump and to all of us how he would 
oversee this investigation if he is confirmed. Just look at the 
unsolicited--unsolicited--19-page memo that William Barr sent to 
Special Counsel Mueller's supervisors and to the Trump legal defense 
team just in June of 2018.
  It is notable that Mr. Barr did not send this memo to Special Counsel 
Mueller himself, and he did not make it public.
  This was the only time Mr. Barr had sent a memo like this to the 
Justice Department, and he did not disclose in his memo that he had 
personally interviewed with the President the previous year about 
serving on the President's defense team.
  This memo is critical for its substance. In it, Mr. Barr argued that 
Bob Mueller, the investigator, the special counsel, should not be 
permitted to ask the President any questions about obstruction of 
justice, even though Mr. Barr's analysis focused only on one narrow 
obstruction theory.
  The memo calls into serious question Mr. Barr's ability to 
impartially oversee the obstruction of justice issues in the Mueller 
investigation at a moment in history when that is an essential 
question. Mr. Barr has made no commitment to recuse himself from such 
questions. That is worrisome.
  That William Barr would volunteer a 19-page legal memo with dramatic 
efforts at research and verification, give this to the President's 
defense team and to Mr. Mueller's supervisors at the Department of 
Justice, and basically make arguments diminishing the authority of the 
special counsel to move forward in the investigation raises a serious 
question about his impartiality.
  Just as important, I am alarmed by Mr. Barr's continued hedging about 
what he will do when Mr. Mueller completes his investigation and has a 
presentation of his conclusions, his evidence, and his findings.
  Make no mistake. Special Counsel Mueller's findings and conclusions 
should be shared with the American people and with the U.S. Congress. 
Current Department of Justice regulations and policies allow for such a 
release. I am concerned that Mr. Barr will exercise his discretion 
under those regulations narrowly and issue a cursory report that does 
not take the findings of the Mueller investigation in their entirety 
and make them available to the American people. This investigation is 
too critical to seal its result in some vault at the Department of 
Justice.

  I believe we can trust Bob Mueller to be impartial and unbiased. I 
don't know if he will find the President or people around him guilty of 
wrongdoing beyond the indictments and convictions that have already 
come down or whether he will conclude that there is no further 
responsibility or culpability, but I trust his findings, whatever they 
are. He is a true professional.
  It is important, after we have gone through a year or two of 
investigation, that the American people hear the details, hear the 
information that may be part of the Mueller investigation.
  I am also concerned that Mr. Barr will continue his predecessor's 
harsh approach on immigration instead of charting a different course.
  It was just last year, I believe in April in 2018, when the Attorney 
General Jeff Sessions announced something called the zero-tolerance 
policy.
  Do you remember it?
  The zero-tolerance policy said that the U.S. Government would 
forcibly remove infants, toddlers, and children from their parents at 
our border.
  The inspector general's reports say that it had been going on for a 
year before it was publicly announced.
  Twenty-eight hundred children were removed from their parents. What 
happened to them next is shameful. There was no effort made to trace 
these children and the parents who were forced to give them up.
  It was only when a Federal judge in San Diego stepped forward and 
required the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Health 
and Human Services to make an accounting of how many children were 
still not united with their parents that they took the effort to do so 
months--months--after those children had been separated from their 
parents.

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  I saw those kids in an immigration court in Chicago in a large office 
building that you would never guess was a court building in the Loop in 
Chicago. There it was, the immigration court taking up most of one 
floor in this office building. People were stacked three and four deep 
in the corridors, waiting for their hearing. But the judge--and she was 
a good person, a real professional--couldn't get her hearing underway. 
She had a problem with those who were appearing before her court that 
day. The problem was this: She had said that before they could start 
the proceeding, those who were appearing had to sit down. One of the 
clients who was in there for a hearing that day had some difficulty. I 
was there to witness it. The difficulty was she was 2 years old. She 
wasn't tall enough to crawl up in that chair without somebody lifting 
her.
  The other client who had a hearing that day, who had been removed 
under this zero-tolerance policy, was a little more skillful. He 
spotted a Matchbox car on the top of the table, and this 4-year-old boy 
got up in the chair to play with it.
  Those were two of the clients before this immigration judge in this 
office building in the Loop in Chicago. They had been forcibly removed 
from their parents, and they were up for a hearing. It was in August.
  As a result of the hearing, as with most of the hearings, they said: 
We are going to postpone this until we get further evidence. The next 
hearing will be in December--December.
  I would ask any parent, any grandparent: What would you think about 
being separated from that little girl, that 2-year-old girl, whom you 
love so much, for 6 months, 8 months, 9 months?
  That was the policy of this Trump administration with zero 
tolerance--a policy created and announced by Attorney General Jeff 
Sessions.
  So when I asked Mr. Barr: You are going to take over this job. What 
is your view on this type of policy? Sadly, I didn't get a direct 
answer.
  I am concerned that in many respects Mr. Barr could continue the 
harsh approach to immigration that we have seen by the Trump 
administration instead of charting a different course, a course more 
consistent with America's values and history.
  We are in fact a nation of immigrants. Throughout American history, 
immigration has strengthened and renewed our country. I stand here 
today, the son of an immigrant girl who came to this country from 
Lithuania at the age of 2. Her son grew up and got a full-time 
government job right here in the Senate. It can happen. It is my story. 
It is my family's story. It is America's story.
  When I listened to the diatribes by this President in the State of 
the Union Address about immigrants coming to this country--of course 
there are bad people. We don't want any of them in this country, and if 
they are here, we want them to leave. But think of all of the good 
people who have come to this country and made America what it is today. 
The President dismisses those folks, doesn't take them as seriously as 
he should, as far as I am concerned.
  I want to know if this Attorney General, Mr. Barr, subscribes to the 
President's theories on immigration. For the past 2 years, President 
Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions did everything in their power 
to make America's immigration policy harsh and unwelcoming.
  Mr. Barr's comments and history make me fear that he will bring the 
full weight of the Justice Department to advance the President's anti-
immigration agenda. Mr. Barr has refused to disavow the cruel and un-
American zero-tolerance policy, which I just described, that led to 
thousands of children being forcibly removed from their parents, and he 
has fully and repeatedly echoed President Trump's call for a border 
wall after the debate we have been through over the last several 
months, falsely arguing that it will help to combat the opioid 
epidemic. That is a ludicrous argument. In fact, the Drug Enforcement 
Administration, which Mr. Barr would supervise, has found that the vast 
majority of deadly narcotics coming into America through the Mexican 
border are coming in through ports of entry. They are not being carried 
in backpacks by people scaling fences. That is where our security 
efforts should be made, not with some medieval wall.
  Mr. Barr also falsely and repeatedly was critical of our asylum laws 
for a host of problems. Our asylum laws, which have historically had 
broad bipartisan support until this President came along, simply ensure 
that we honor our legal and moral obligation to provide safe haven to 
families and children who are fleeing persecution.
  Who are these families seeking asylum and refugee status in the 
United States? You can find members of those families right here on the 
floor of the United States Senate. You can find three Cuban-American 
U.S. Senators--one Democrat and two Republicans--whose families came 
here as refugees from Castro's Cuba. Are we having second thoughts now 
about whether they are a valuable part of America? I am not. These 
people, these Cuban-Americans, have become an integral part of our 
Nation. They were once refugees and asylees. Now, they are party of 
America's future, and we are better off for it.
  I could tell that story so many different ways. Soviet Jews trying to 
escape persecution in the old Soviet Union and the Vietnamese who stood 
by us and fought by our men and women in uniform during the Vietnam 
war, who had to escape an oppressive regime, came to the United States 
as refugees and asylees. We are now seeing under President Trump the 
lowest level of refugees in modern memory. We are walking away from our 
obligation to the world.
  And Mr. Barr called for withholding of Federal funds to force cities 
to cooperate with the Trump administration's immigration agenda, even 
though courts have repeatedly struck down that approach.
  Perhaps most troubling is Mr. Barr's comment to me that he thinks it 
is absolutely appropriate for the Attorney General to change the 
immigration rules to help advance a President's campaign. He said he 
did it to help the campaign of President Bush in 1992. The idea of an 
Attorney General letting campaign politics drive immigration 
enforcement is unacceptable regardless of the President.
  I am also concerned with the views Mr. Barr expressed on something 
known as the unitary executive theory and his expansive view of 
Presidential power. He put it bluntly in that 19-page memo I mentioned 
before, when he said the President alone is the executive branch. We 
need an Attorney General who recognizes the need for checks and 
balances, but he did not believe that this President should be held 
accountable for many of the actions he has taken. I may be naive, but I 
don't believe any American is above the law, including the President of 
the United States.
  This is not an ordinary time in the history of the Justice 
Department. President Trump has criticized the Judiciary, individual 
Federal judges, our intelligence Agencies, and the Department of 
Justice when they continued an investigation into his campaign. He has 
undermined their independence and integrity with his storm of tweets 
every single day.
  William Barr said he sees the Attorney General as ``the President's 
lawyer''--in his words--but the chief law enforcement officer of the 
United States is supposed to be the lawyer for the people of the United 
States. We need an Attorney General who will lead the Justice 
Department without fear or favor and who will serve the Constitution of 
the American people even if it means standing up to a President.
  If he is confirmed, I hope Mr. Barr will prove me wrong and that he 
will be a good Attorney General who came at the right moment in 
history, but I have not received the reassurances I was looking for 
from him to give him a vote to reach that position. I will be voting no 
on the Barr nomination.
  I see my colleague and friend Senator Leahy on the floor. I will 
withhold two other statements for the Record to yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I applaud the Senator from Illinois, the 
senior Senator from Illinois, for his comments. He knows what it is to 
have immigrants in your family, as do I. I was fortunate to have a 
little more understanding as my paternal grandparents immigrated to 
Vermont from Italy,

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and my wife's parents immigrated to Vermont from French-speaking 
Canada. I still struggle with the Italian I knew as a child. I have 
done a little better with French, in order to speak to Marcelle's 
family. But I see the diversity that came of it. I see it in our State 
of Vermont, and I hope our country is better for it. So I thank the 
Senator from Illinois.
  The last time William Barr was before the Senate was 28 years ago, 
during the George H.W. Bush administration, and I voted for him to be 
Attorney General. I did so despite having some reservations that I 
shared with him and the Senate at the time. Mr. Barr and I did not see 
eye to eye on many issues. We did not then, and we do not now. But he 
was clearly qualified for the position, and he had earned the 
confidence of the Senate. So I felt free to vote for him.
  I am concerned by some of the remarks that Senator Durbin has 
referred to which seem to indicate that Mr. Barr may feel that he is 
the lawyer for the President, not only the Attorney General of the 
United States. He is there to represent everybody--everybody--and to 
make sure the laws are upheld for everybody.
  Now we find ourselves considering his nomination under 
extraordinarily different circumstances than we did when my friend 
President Bush had nominated him. Multiple criminal investigations loom 
over the Trump Presidency. In fact, these investigations may ultimately 
define the Trump Presidency, and the President has reacted to it with 
apparently the only way he knows how. He just attacks relentlessly. He 
doesn't respond to them, but attacks. That includes attacking 
investigators, witnesses, even the justice system itself. That also 
includes firing both the FBI Director and his previous Attorney General 
for not handling one of the investigations as the President wanted, but 
instead as the law required.
  The President views the Justice Department as an extension of his 
power. He has repeatedly called on it to target his political 
opponents. He has even reportedly told his advisers that he expects the 
Attorney General to protect him personally. I have been here with eight 
Presidents. I have never known a President, either Republican or 
Democrat, to have such an outrageous and wrong--wrong--view of the 
Department of Justice.
  The integrity of the Justice Department has not been so tested since 
the dark days of Watergate. Yet when the Judiciary Committee considered 
the nomination of Elliot Richardson to be Attorney General in the midst 
of that national crisis, nominated by Richard Nixon, the nominee made 
numerous, detailed commitments to the committee. Mr. Richardson did so, 
in his words, to ``create the maximum possible degree of public 
confidence in the integrity of the process.'' That same principle 
applies equally today.
  Indeed, that may be the only way the Justice Department escapes the 
Trump administration with its integrity intact. In large part due to 
the relentless politicizing of the Department by the President, 
millions of Americans will see bias no matter which way the Department 
resolves the Russia investigation. Because of seeing such bias, our 
country is diminished. The justice system is greatly diminished. In my 
view, the Department has only one way out--transparency. The American 
people deserve to know the facts, whatever they may be. That requires 
the special counsel's report, and the evidence that supports it, be 
made public.
  Unfortunately, despite efforts from both Republicans and Democrats in 
the Senate, Mr. Barr has repeatedly refused to make that commitment. 
Worse, much of his testimony before the Judiciary Committee left us 
with more doubts. Will Mr. Barr allow President Trump to make a 
sweeping, unprecedented claim of Executive privilege that allows him to 
hide the report? Will Mr. Barr, relying on a Department policy to avoid 
disparaging uncharged parties, not disclose potential misconduct by the 
President simply due to another policy to not indict sitting 
Presidents? We don't know the answer, but we do know that Mr. Barr's 
testimony on these issues could lay the groundwork for potentially no 
transparency at all.
  Mr. Barr also repeatedly refused to follow the precedent of Attorney 
General Jeff Sessions and commit to follow the advice of career ethics 
officials on whether he needs to recuse himself from the Russia 
investigation. He even declined my request to commit to simply sharing 
their recommendation with the Judiciary Committee. That is critical 
because there is reason to question whether an appearance of a conflict 
exists.
  Prior to his nomination, Mr. Barr made his unorthodox views on the 
special counsel's obstruction of justice investigation very clear. He 
did that with a 19-page memo sent directly to the President's lawyers. 
Mr. Barr spoke dismissively about the broader Russia investigation. He 
even claimed that a conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton was far 
more deserving of a Federal investigation than possible collusion, and 
this was notwithstanding the fact that, by that time, that conspiracy 
had been debunked. He was asked, in effect, whether this memo was a job 
application, because it is difficult to imagine that these views 
escaped the attention of the President. That makes it all the more 
critical that Mr. Barr follow the precedent of prior Attorneys General 
and commit to following the advice of career ethics officials on 
recusal.
  I am also concerned that, if confirmed, Mr. Barr would defend 
policies that I believe are both ineffective and inhumane. We heard 
Senator Durbin speak eloquently about the horrible, horrible program of 
separating families at the border, and I think the Nation is still 
reeling from that systematic separation. But, in light of that, Mr. 
Barr praised Jeff Sessions for ``breaking the record for prosecution'' 
of the misdemeanor offenses that forced families to be separated. In 
other words, on a misdemeanor, you take the child away from the parents 
and separate them. Nobody seems to know where everybody goes after 
that.
  Ask a 4-year-old: What are your parents' name? They will say, in 
whatever language: Mommy and daddy.
  Where do you live?
  We live in the house next to so-and-so.
  They don't know the addresses. They rely on their parents, and now 
they have been separated from them.
  It makes me think Attorneys General should be able to stand up for 
the rule of law. I remember a time when former Acting Attorney General 
Sally Yates stood up for the rule of law. She refused to defend 
President Trump's first iteration of his Muslim ban as a deeply flawed 
order. It was stained with racial animus, that even applied to 
individuals who were lawful permanent residents and had valid visas, 
Mr. Barr described Ms. Yates's decision as ``obstruction'' and a 
``serious abuse of office.''

  My God, this country should not have religious tests. If we did, my 
grandparents would not have been able to come to this country.
  Relevant to each of my concerns is Mr. Barr's extremely broad views 
of executive power. He is an advocate of the unitary executive theory, 
believing that the Constitution vests nearly all executive power ``in 
one and one only person--the President.'' He has said that an Attorney 
General has ``no authority and no conceivable justification for 
directing the department's lawyers not to advocate the president's 
position in court.'' This expansive view of a President's power would 
concern me no matter whose administration it was. In fact, if you go 
way back in history, it conflicts with Supreme Court Justice James 
Iredell's observation in 1792 that the Attorney General ``is not called 
the Attorney General of the President, but Attorney General of the 
United States.''
  I find Mr. Barr's deferential view of Executive power especially 
concerning. We already know much of what President Trump intends to do. 
It includes taking billions of dollars that Congress has already 
appropriated and diverting it toward a wasteful and ineffective vanity 
wall. What would Mr. Barr do when confronted with such an order? He has 
essentially told us: Mr. Barr has argued that Congress's appropriations 
power provided under Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution is ``not 
an independent source of congressional power'' to ``control the 
allocation of government resources.'' That would come as great news to 
everybody--Republicans and Democrats--who has been an appropriator in 
any session of Congress.

[[Page S1297]]

He even believes, that if a President ``finds no appropriated funds 
within a given category'' but can find such money ``in another 
category,'' he can spend those funds as he wishes so long as the 
spending is within his broad ``constitutional purview.'' Such views 
should concern all of us here--Republicans and Democrats alike--who 
believe, as the Founders of this country believed, that Congress 
possesses the power of the purse.
  Unfortunately, I fear that Mr. Barr's long-held views on Executive 
power would essentially be weaponized by President Trump--a man who we 
know derides any limits on his authority. Over the past two years, we 
have seen the erosion of our institutional checks and balances in the 
face of creeping authoritarianism. That can't continue.
  In conclusion, let me be clear. I respect Mr. Barr. I voted for him 
when President George H. W. Bush nominated him. As Attorney General, I 
do not doubt that he would stand faithfully by his genuinely held 
convictions, but I fear this particular administration needs somebody 
who would give him a much tighter leash, as Attorneys General have in 
the past. So because of that, I will vote no on Mr. Barr's nomination.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, while Senator Leahy is still on the floor, 
I want to thank him for his extraordinary work on the conference 
committee to try to resolve our budget impasse. I know he has been 
working night and day. He has shared with many of us the work he has 
been doing on behalf of getting a budget that reflects the will of this 
body and of the House, and hopefully it will be completed before 
midnight on Friday.
  So I want to personally thank the distinguished Senator, the senior 
Senator from Vermont, Mr. Leahy, for the work he has done to keep the 
government open, to provide security for our borders, and to make sure 
we get all of our appropriations bills done.
  Mr. LEAHY. Thank you.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.