[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.