-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise to oppose the nomination of Sean Donahue of Florida to serve as General Counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Mr. Donahue may be the most unfit nominee ever for any Federal Agency general counsel. As I said in my remarks in committee, this guy would have trouble getting an entry-level legal position in any one of our offices, yet here we are.

The Constitution provides the Senate with advice and consent power. This power should carry some meaning. ``Advice and consent'' should not be empty words, a rubber stamp.

The Senate confirmation vote on Mr. Donahue that is moments away shows how little we care to live up to that constitutional responsibility. This is a truly preposterous nominee. The EPA general counsel is the chief legal advisor to EPA on environmental laws, including Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, the Superfund Act, and others; on the Agency's development and implementation of regulations under its various statutes; and on litigation strategy with DOJ in court challenges to Agency actions. The general counsel oversees nearly 200 lawyers and 300 total staff.

Mr. Donahue has no experience qualifying him to do any of these things. He has never tried a case to verdict, never taken a deposition, never signed a pleading, never argued a motion. He has never personally litigated any case, let alone Federal cases implicating our Nation's most important environmental office.

What has he done? Mr. Donahue practiced law for a year and a half at a small firm in Buffalo that fired him for his version of being ``overloaded with work.'' He was not even a member of the New York bar, however, and he then failed the DC bar on his first attempt. He claims, in New York, to have supervised six to eight individuals, which seems a stretch for someone not even a member of the bar. And there is no evidence--whatever minimal and unsuccessful legal experience Mr. Donahue had--that any work he may have done bore at all on the laws and regulations applicable to EPA.

The previous seven Senate-confirmed EPA general counsels were pretty impressive: Counsel Prieto, two decades in Federal service, including as general counsel at both the Department of Agriculture and DOJ's Energy and Natural Resources Division; Counsel Leopold, 14 years as an environmental lawyer and general counsel of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection; Counsel Garbow, 21 years practicing environmental law in the public and private sectors, including at the EPA and DOJ; Counsel Fulton, 22 years of leadership roles at EPA, following 8 years at DOJ's Environment and Natural Resources Division; Counsel Martella, court of appeals law clerk, 7 years with the Natural Resources Section of DOJ, Acting EPA general counsel; Counsel Klee, law firm for 9 years, chief counsel to the Senate Environment Public Works Committee for 5 years, and senior counselor to the Secretary of the Interior; Counsel Fabricant, 2 years in private practice and 5 years as private counsel, then chief counsel to then-New Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman. This guy? A year and a half, fired, then in- house counsel at a solar company, tried no cases ever.

So why him? Well, I suspect part of it is that he will be so grateful that he will do whatever he is told. We have actually seen this already, even before his confirmation. He testified that the Trump administration's current assault on congressionally authorized, appropriated, and obligated funding was legal, never mind multiple Federal district court orders to the contrary. I would love to see him take that argument into those courts that had already found those orders illegal.

Second, and perhaps more telling, who cares at EPA if their counsel has neither experience nor knowledge? They are going to be overseen by the fossil fuel industry anyway. He will be told what to do by fossil fuel polluter lawyers. So all he will have to do is put what they want on EPA letterhead and file it.

Oh, yeah, and the nepo thing. His significant other is the Deputy Director of Presidential Personnel, a role with purview over every political appointment, including his.

Mr. President, this is a pretty bleak low point in Senate nominations' history. This is the last chance to pull back from the brink of confirming, likely, the most flagrantly unqualified person ever for an Agency general counsel position.

I urge my colleagues to vote no.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source