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Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, in just a little while, later this afternoon, we will consider confirmation of Jeanine Pirro as U.S. attorney for the district of Washington, DC.

Now, I have a particular feeling about appointments as U.S. attorney, having served as one in Connecticut and having seen how profoundly impactful it can be on the lives of everyday Americans.

Obviously, it is a position that is integral to justice in the United States. It is the top Federal prosecutor in that district. In DC, it is the largest office in the whole country and probably one of the two or three most important because it has jurisdiction over all of the Federal Agencies, Federal employees, Federal issues that arise in this profoundly significant place.

Like any prosecutor in the Federal system, it is a position of absolutely staggering importance and power. I learned as U.S. attorney that probably the most important decision I made was whether to bring an indictment; that is to say, whether to charge somebody with a crime. Most--almost all--were convicted. But convicted or not, speaking generally, somebody charged with a crime suffers damage for life-- financial harm, reputational impact, families often disrupted. And that is no reason to avoid bringing charges but only to make sure that someone who is making those final decisions is independent, objective, and nonpolitical in the way they go about the job.

Jeanine Pirro is unqualified to be U.S. attorney. She is unfit for this role. She is simply a loyal political acolyte and sycophant of the President. Loyalty is the reason she has been nominated, not experience. She is not objective. She is not independent. In fact, she is essentially an entertainer. Nothing wrong with being an entertainer, but it is not a qualification for being U.S. attorney.

In fact, on her show, she has made Islamophobic comments so offensive that FOX News temporarily suspended her from the air. She has promoted a wide variety of damaging, offensive conspiracy theories, including the thoroughly debunked allegation that some pro-choice States allow doctors to kill fully delivered, breathing babies. She was a key figure in promoting the entirely baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Her public record essentially disqualifies her from serving as the chief Federal prosecutor.

Her nomination is more serious and more profoundly important than just her particular place. It is, in a sense, a symbol of what President Trump is doing to the U.S. justice system. My Republican colleagues are simply not only willing to place her at the head of the largest U.S. Attorney's Office in the country, last week, they moved her nomination forward by a party-line vote. They rallied behind her, not in spite of her record but because of it--again, simply because she is loyal to the President.

So the issue here is not only about her; it is about whether loyalty will qualify somebody for this kind of powerful position in the U.S. Department of Justice, which is supposed to be above politics, when she has demonstrated that, in fact, she would be totally unfit for any such office.

How loyal is she? Well, she was individually discussed in the defamation lawsuit against FOX News for promoting 2020 election conspiracies. Her totally false comments were at the center of that defamation case. FOX News canceled an episode of her show after the 2020 election with a FOX executive producer, saying: ``I don't trust her to be responsible.'' A FOX producer called her a ``reckless maniac'' in an internal email. These were her colleagues, her coworkers, her producers. One of them asserted that ``she should never be on live television'' and described her draft of a monologue as ``rife w[ith] conspiracy theories.''

That defamation case ended in a settlement in which FOX News agreed to pay $787 million, in part, because of statements she made on the air.

The history of peddling conspiracy theories on cable news should be fundamentally disqualifying for any prosecutor, let alone the head of the largest U.S. Attorney's Office. Her record should preclude her from receiving even an interview for an assistant U.S. attorney position. Instead, her loyalty at the expense of truth has won her a nomination for one of the most powerful Department of Justice positions in the whole country.

And her specific record around the work of the very U.S. Attorney's Office she is now nominated to lead reveals how unqualified and unsuitable she is for this role.

Here is the most important part of her background. Four and a half years ago, as we all know, rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, contributing to the deaths of Capitol Police, injuring them severely, disrupting the vote-counting for President, and leaving devastation in their wake.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for DC was primarily responsible for bringing the January 6 rioters to justice, with praise from both sides of the aisle for the diligent and dedicated work they did to make sure that justice was done. For years, those prosecutors worked alongside the FBI to investigate, to build cases, to bring prosecution against the rioters. They didn't choose those roles or assignment; they were chosen by the Department of Justice to do their duty and enforce the law.

But on her radio show, Jeanine Pirro agreed with a guest who said the Department of Justice prosecutors handling the January 6 cases should be criminally prosecuted. She said:

I absolutely agree with that.

In her responses to this committee's questions, she failed to disavow this position. In fact, she failed to directly answer whether she believed Federal prosecutors assigned to work on the January 6 cases should, themselves, be prosecuted. In other words, she sided with the criminals.

She criticized the prosecutors who now will be in the office that she has been nominated to lead. Her criticism of them was to side with the conspiracy theorists and the call-in guests to her show as Judge Pirro. Rather than condemning pardons for people who committed violence against law enforcement, she simply wrote:

The decision to issue a pardon is a power that belongs to the President. That is what she answered when she was asked about pardons for January 6 rioters who had been convicted of violence against law enforcement.

Again, she refused to answer key questions. And, unfortunately, the Judiciary Committee failed to bring her forward as a witness, despite our requests and demands that she be a witness in her nomination proceeding. That is really regrettable on the part of the Judiciary Committee and, I think, an avoidance of responsibility that we owe the American people to scrutinize somebody who plainly raises such profound questions of qualification, even if you prize loyalty to Donald Trump.

This person who Donald Trump has nominated to be in this position of trust and responsibility, plainly is not just unfit but would disgrace this office and diminish the credibility of the entire Department of Justice. That is the more profound question here, whether someone so unqualified will be confirmed after no testimony, after inadequate consideration, after simply agreeing because she is loyal to the President.

Rather than support the prosecution and conviction of people who assaulted law enforcement officers, she believes that the Federal prosecutors bringing those cases should, themselves, be investigated. The U.S. Attorney's Office that did those cases, the dedicated professionals who investigated them and the people of the District of Columbia--indeed, our Nation--deserve better.

I oppose her nomination. I urge my colleagues to join me in voting no.

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