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Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, later today, the Senate will vote on the nomination of Jeanine Pirro to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. I urge my colleagues to examine this nominee's record and oppose her nomination.
I have heard some of my Republican colleagues claim that Senate Democrats are blocking U.S. attorney nominees in an unprecedented fashion. That is simply not true.
Two years ago, then-Senator Vance announced he would block all U.S. Attorney nominees in order to ``grind the [the Justice Department] to a halt.''
I went to the floor eight times seeking unanimous consent to quickly confirm the U.S. attorney nominees whom Senator Vance was blocking.
Senator Vance argued it was no problem to take rollcall votes on U.S. attorney nominees, stating that it is ``not too much to ask . . . to vote on cloture and vote on these nominees on the record.''
I have said time and again that there cannot be one set of rules for Republicans and one for Democrats. That said, I am willing to work with my Senate colleagues on a path forward.
However, President Trump is not making it easy to reach an agreement when he insists on installing MAGA loyalists as interim U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation.
U.S. attorneys are supposed to be apolitical law enforcement officials focused on protecting public safety. But shortly after her interim appointment to the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba told a news outlet that she aimed to ``turn New Jersey red.''
And just last year, John Sarcone, the interim U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York said the Democratic Party is ``evil in my opinion.''
District of Nevada interim U.S. attorney Sigal Chattah has a long trail of extreme, hateful comments. To take just a few examples, she called a Black Member of Congress a ``hood rat''; called a Black woman prosecutor ``ghetto''; called a prominent Black entertainer a ``monkey''; and said that Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is Black, ``should be hanging from a f-ing crane.'' And these outrageous comments are just the tip of the iceberg.
Do these sound like apolitical prosecutors who are focused on keeping their communities safe? Notably, the White House has not even bothered to try working with home State Senators in each of these districts to find a consensus U.S. attorney candidates. Instead, the administration is trying to make an end-run around the Senate. This should be deeply troubling to all of us.
Which brings me to Ms. Pirro, the latest Trump loyalist nominated to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. For decades, Ms. Pirro has demonstrated that she prioritizes her relationship with President Trump over almost everything else.
Ms. Pirro repeated falsehoods about the 2020 election to millions of viewers, compelling Fox News to pay nearly $800 million to settle defamation claims brought by Dominion Voting Systems. For example, Ms. Pirro falsely claimed that Dominion ``started in Venezuela with Cuban money'' and that the company had a software backdoor to flip votes.
She has called January 6 rioters ``hostages'' and complained about the 22-year sentence imposed on Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, arguing that he should not be subject to such a long prison term.
Notably, a judge found that Tarrio's actions led to ``two hundred men amped up for battle encircling the Capitol.'' After his release, Tarrio posted a video of himself stalking officers who defended the Capitol on January 6.
Ms. Pirro has argued that prosecutors handling January 6 cases should be criminally prosecuted themselves. And now she is nominated to lead the office where many of these prosecutors still work, if they haven't been fired by Emil Bove already.
When I met with her last month, I asked Ms. Pirro if she always accepted assignments given to her by supervisors when she was an assistant district attorney. Unsurprisingly, she said yes.
But when I asked her whether it was appropriate to terminate prosecutors for their work on January 6 prosecutions, she wouldn't answer. She also claimed that she hadn't fired anybody.
Yet since Ms. Pirro became the interim U.S. attorney, three career prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office, including the leader of the Capitol Siege Section, were fired by DOJ. It is hard to believe that she had no knowledge of these terminations.
I am also concerned that Ms. Pirro continues to justify the Trump administration's unlawful actions.
Just days before she became the interim U.S. attorney, she argued that the administration could deport immigrants without due process, claiming that the Fifth Amendment ``says nothing about illegals, so cut the crap . . . .''
As Ms. Pirro knows full well, the Fifth Amendment applies to everyone present in the United States as it states that ``No person . . . shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.''
Ms. Pirro has proven to be a willing accomplice in weaponizing the justice system to protect President Trump's allies and go after his enemies. I urge my colleagues to oppose this nomination.
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