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Floor Speech

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Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I believe that the Attorney General may, in fact, be the most important position in a President's Cabinet, and if it is not the most important, it certainly is the most difficult.

Whoever is our Attorney General is a person that serves all of us. They have two clients. They have the President who appointed her or him and they have the Constitution.

President Kennedy appointed his brother. I do have a problem with any President seeing the job of Attorney General to be the person who runs ``my Justice Department,'' and that is how President Trump has characterized it--``my Justice Department.''

So we have this dilemma with respect to coming to a conclusion on the use of the responsibility that the Senate as an institution has for the advice and consent of a Cabinet member.

I start from the orientation that a President should be able to pick his team and that we should take up nominations and move on them, vote on them expeditiously. My orientation is that the President is entitled to the benefit of the doubt but not to a blank check.

What is also difficult for me with respect to this appointment is that, in my view, Pam Bondi is accomplished and competent and qualified. I have great respect for her work as a county prosecutor in Florida, and I have great respect for her work as attorney general in the State of Florida. I have great respect for the fact that, as a woman, she made that decision to run for attorney general and had to overcome pretty significant odds in order to win that position.

I also remember, Mr. Ranking Member, that she had great testimony from people whom she worked with, and I think both you and I have a great deal of respect for folks who have a leadership position and treat their subordinates with great respect and have their affection and confidence, and that came through in the testimony of people who have worked with Ms. Bondi.

My grave concern is really about President Trump and what he is clearly demanding of the person, whoever it is--and now it is Ms. Bondi--what the President is demanding, and that clearly is a loyalty oath to him as opposed to a demand for straightforward, candid advice, including, if the President is asking something to be done, like the prosecution of a political adversary, that the answer, Mr. President, has to be no. That is what the President is demanding. We can argue on both sides about whether that is the case, but the evidence is overwhelming.

The question that I have asked a number of nominees, including Mr. Patel and including Ms. Bondi, is, Who won the 2020 election? It is pretty clear that the President's team, in preparing folks for that inevitable question, came up with an acceptable answer. The acceptable answer is that President Biden was the President; President Biden was certified. No one could just say the straightforward: President Biden won.

In the closest election in our history, Bush v. Gore, after the Supreme Court made its decision, not only did Al Gore accept the outcome, but Democrats did, Americans did. That was pre-January 6 when we all relied on the guardrail in the Constitution that there would be a commitment to a peaceful transfer of power and that there would be renunciation of violence as a means of persuasion in the outcome of an election.

January 6 did change that. There was an attack on the Capitol. Many of us were here. That was inspired by President Trump. He invited people to come: ``It will be wild.''

It was provoked because the President used the enormous authority he had and the enormous credibility he had with people who supported him to begin peddling the ``Stop the Steal'' narrative; the election was stolen.

President Trump has never, ever given up on that. As far as he is concerned, he says to every person and every audience: That election is stolen.

People who were going to work in his administration, in a vetting process, had to answer that question in the way that was acceptable to then-duly elected President Trump. That is not acceptable to me. It is not acceptable.

President Biden won. President Trump won this last election. I didn't vote for him, but I can say it. I can acknowledge it and do the best I can as a member of the minority party.

But we now have a President who is now allowing a person to have a dual loyalty to him, yes, and to the Constitution, to make it clear for that person who is nominated for a law enforcement position, that they accept his narrative of what happened in 2020. It is really dangerous, in my view, for our country.

The President has gone on, much to my regret, intensifying that concern that many of us have as to whether there will be an adherence to the rule of law.

In an extraordinary first 2 weeks, the President has gone on--it is my opinion, but a lot of courts support it--a rampage of illegality. It is a serious threat to our country.

Let me start with the impoundment--you know, basic civics. The article I branch--that is the U.S. Senate and U.S. House--has authority over appropriations and spending. The executive can propose, and we can consider, an appropriations request. The President can reject an appropriations bill that Congress passes with a veto. But what the President can't do is pick and choose where he feels like spending or just disregarding the appropriations passed by the Congress of the United States. And he is doing that.

The impoundment is patently illegal, not even close. And what is clear to me is the President doesn't care if the impoundment causes enough havoc that affected agencies will either be destroyed or severely damaged.

Let me give a couple of examples. When that impoundment notice went out, Wells River Community Health Center in Vermont--it provides healthcare to really poor Vermonters, and they do an incredible job. They have a cash balance that allows them to stay in business from 0 to 5 days. That is it. The impoundment notice comes in, literally, they show up to work, and it says: You shut down. You can't open up tomorrow.

Those folks running that organization don't have the money to pay the salaries of anyone: the doctors, the receptionists, the medical providers.

We see what is happening at USAID: ``We are shutting you down.'' The doors are locked. People show up for work; they can't get in. That is illegal and unconstitutional, as I see it.

The administration, the President, has made a clear decision that he doesn't care. He is not going to worry about the niceties. Things that restrained Republican and Democratic Presidents before; namely, adherence to the law and recognition of their responsibility to preserve a tool that has been a safeguard for our democracy through both Republican and Democratic administrations, those rules don't apply to him.

Then we have seen that he has delegated authority to a nonelected billionaire--Mr. Musk--and told him, basically, to go wild with the Federal Government; do what you want; go where you want. And in one of the most astonishing things, they sent over--Musk sent over five kids. One of them is 19; he can't drink in Vermont--and four early-20-year- old folks. They marched in and the Treasury Secretary, basically, of the United States--the successor to Alexander Hamilton--a man I respect, by the way, Mr. Bessent, and the person who ran the payment system, and said: ``We are in charge.'' That is basically what they did.

Then they got access to the computers, which means they have your Social Security Number and mine. They have information about our taxes. Every individual in this country, their privacy has now been put in jeopardy.

Just think if this were the private sector. Let's say you are Jamie Dimon, and you run a major financial institution, J.P. Morgan, and five kids show up at your bank. They say: Hey, Mr. Musk sent us. Give us access to the computers.

And they have access to all the individual information, company information, of the folks who work with J.P. Morgan. That is what happened.

It is not really apparent to all the American people what is happening. It is the folks who are directly impacted by this, the folks at USAID who don't have a job, the folks at Wells River Clinic who are operating on the tightest of margins who have suffered and don't know whether they will be able to keep the lights on. It is the woman, the mom, who had, finally, after months and months of trying, a dental appointment through Medicaid--they had it canceled arbitrarily and abruptly. Those individuals are feeling it, and this is going to ripple out to more and more Americans seeing what is happening.

We need an Attorney General who will share my shock at a President acting in such a lawless way.

The fact is, frankly, I don't think President Trump ever in the world would place a value on having an Attorney General who is willing to tell him: Mr. President, no, you can't get appointed unless you pass the test. And the test was on full display both with Mr. Patel and Ms. Bondi in their inability to answer the basic question: Who won the 2020 election?

My concern is not that they ``get the answer right.'' My concern is that they get that their profound responsibility is, first and foremost, to the Constitution and the rule of law.

The President is not looking for anyone other than someone who is going to give him the fealty that he demands when these questions arise.

What we are seeing with the President in these first 2 weeks of his term is that there is no restraint. The rule of law is for suckers. He is going to break things, and whatever damage is done is not his problem.

The problem is, there are a lot of really innocent good Americans who are being affected by this: doctors and nurses, moms whose children get Medicaid help, lawyers who dedicated their career to civil rights or environmental protection.

There is a cruelty with the way in which the President has acted. It is almost a casual cruelty that just doesn't matter. So I am looking for some confidence that the checks and balances that are required, that we can build up.

Frankly, there is a major question that we face as a U.S. Senator and each of us as an individual Senator. I believe, at least to exercise our judgment--we won't agree, necessarily, and we may come to a different judgment about how best we can do what I think each of us is required to do, and that is to protect the institutional responsibility of the U.S. Senate to be an independent, separate branch of government and to adhere to the importance of the separation of powers, and that this institution has a fundamental responsibility to the American people to be a check and balance.

There are 100 of us here, and we may have 100 different opinions as to when it is that we should say no, but my hope is that every single one of us will accept that it is our responsibility to make that judgment and not just passively submit to whatever action the President is sending our way.

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