Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, similar to my Republican leader, I come to the floor to share my concerns about Mr. Adegbile's nomination, and I will explain my voting no today.

I begin by saying I believe the nominee possesses high moral character and personal integrity. I have met him. I am also aware he has been working on the chairman's staff of the Judiciary Committee for the last few months. Unfortunately, I have reached the conclusion that this nominee isn't the right pick to lead the Civil Rights Division.

First of all, it is no secret that I believe the last individual to lead this office, the current Secretary of Labor, was very political and extremely committed to a host of political causes. Of course, I don't expect President Obama to nominate conservatives to his political appointments, but as we all know, these are very important and powerful jobs. The individual who holds them wields a tremendous amount of power on behalf of the Department of Justice.

I expect the President's nominees to be liberal, maybe even very liberal, and in the vast majority of cases the President is entitled to have people of his own choosing serving in these important positions, but the Senate must provide its advice and consent, which is what we are doing today.

In my view the President's nominees can't be so committed to political causes and so devoted to political ideology that it clouds his or her judgment. This is particularly important here, given that this office, under the leadership of the last Assistant Attorney General, was marked by controversy, and those controversies, in my view, were directly linked to that individual's deep commitment to a host of liberal causes, regardless of how well held they were. At the end of the day I believe it clouded his judgment.

With that brief bit of background, I would first note there is bipartisan opposition to this nomination. As I will discuss in a few minutes, there is also widespread opposition from the law enforcement community.

Seth Williams, a Democrat and Philadelphia's district attorney, opposes this nomination. Many of the largest national law enforcement organizations, including the Fraternal Order of Police and the National Association of Police Organizations, vigorously oppose this nomination as well. This opposition is based upon the nominee's record--and the nominee's record, in my view, demonstrates that the nominee has a long history of advocating legal positions far outside the mainstream. I believe it is a record which demonstrates he is simply too deeply committed to these causes to be an effective and fair leader of this very important Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.

I am not going to mention every aspect of the nominee's record I find troubling but a few will be mentioned.

His record on First Amendment issues should give us all pause. For example, in the Hosanna-Tabor case before the Supreme Court, the nominee advocated for a position which would have infringed on the free-exercise rights of religious organizations. Specifically, he argued that a church didn't have the right to freely hire or fire individuals who were responsible for conveying the church's message and carrying out its religious mission. This is at the core of what religious freedom means under our Constitution. The nominee's view was a dramatic departure from established First Amendment jurisprudence. In fact, it was so outside the mainstream that the Supreme Court unanimously rejected it 9 to 0.

Likewise, the nominee's views on the Second Amendment to our Federal Constitution are out of step with the law. In Heller he argued, ``The Second Amendment does not protect an individual's right to keep and bear arms for purely private purposes.'' He also argued that ``the right protected by the Second Amendment are ones that exist only in the context of a lawfully organized militia.''

The Supreme Court, of course, rejected that view, as we all know, and the Supreme Court's decision very much strengthened the right of individuals to bear arms.

I have also been disappointed by the answers the nominee provided to a number of my questions. For example, I asked whether he believed voter-ID requirements--which have been upheld by the Supreme Court in the Crawford case--are the modern-day equivalent of a poll tax. I asked this question for several reasons.

First of all, according to press reports, this nominee said as much in 2005 during a discussion in Georgia regarding voter-ID laws. According to press reports, he called voter-ID cards ``a modern poll tax.'' But the Supreme Court upheld Indiana's voter-ID law as constitutional in the Crawford case in 2008.

So, if the nominee continues to believe that voter-ID laws are the modern-day equivalent of a poll tax and is firmly committed to that principle, I am concerned--we all ought to be concerned--that he would look for creative ways to undermine and challenge those laws, notwithstanding the Crawford case upholding Indiana's voter-ID law.

It goes without saying, of course, a significant part of this job is the enforcement of voting-rights laws, and that enforcement power should be entrusted only to someone we are confident will apply the law in an evenhanded way and, obviously, uphold what the Supreme Court has already said was constitutional.

I have also repeatedly asked the nominee whether, if confirmed, he would commit to implementing the recommendations made by the Department of Justice's Inspector General regarding the hiring process in the Civil Rights Division. The IG's report exposed a hiring process in that division which was structured in a way that systematically screened out conservative applicants. So, evidently, only one point of view is welcomed in that division. But the nominee will not commit to implementing the recommendations the IG's report has put out which addressed those issues so the office has the benefit of an ideologically diverse group of lawyers. This concerns me, and it ought to concern my colleagues. Again, this is a division in the Department of Justice which needs a clean break from the political partisanship which plagued the office under the last Assistant Attorney General.

Finally, I wish to address the nominee's involvement with and representation of Mumia Abu-Jamal. To understand why the nominee's involvement in this case is so concerning to many of us, a bit of history is in order.

Mr. Abu-Jamal is this country's most notorious cop-killer. The facts of the Abu-Jamal case are well known and cannot be seriously disputed.

Back in December of 1981 Abu-Jamal--then known as Wesley Cook--gunned down Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Abu-Jamal first shot Officer Faulkner in the back and then several more times in his chest at close range. As Officer Faulkner lay dying in the street, Abu-Jamal stood over him and shot him in the face. At the hospital a short while later, Abu-Jamal actually boasted he had shot a police officer and said he hoped the officer would die. Ballistics evidence proved Officer Faulkner had been shot with a .38-caliber revolver registered to Abu-Jamal and found at the scene, along with spent shell casings.

No serious observer of this case can question the overwhelming evidence of his guilt. Based on the evidence, he was tried. A jury--including white and African-American jurors--convicted him and sentenced him to death.

Nonetheless, over the course of the next 25 years, opponents of capital punishment and other critics of our justice system have elevated Mr. Abu-Jamal to celebrity status. Those critics have charged that the conviction was tainted by racial discrimination. They slandered police officers and prosecutors and they have leveled accusations of police abuse. They have even organized rallies which portrayed this murderer as the victim.

Amazingly, Mr. Abu-Jamal's campaign has been somewhat successful. He has actually convinced a lot of people he is a political prisoner--if you can imagine that--and his fame isn't confined to the borders of this country. The French went so far as to name a street after him in the suburbs of Paris. In fact, it became such a high-profile issue that in 2006 the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan resolution 368 to 31 condemning the murder of Officer Faulkner and urging the French town to change the name of its street.

I must say the disgust with Mr. Abu-Jamal's celebrity status isn't defined by partisanship. In fact, five of today's Senate Democrats were in the House of Representatives in 2006 when that resolution was passed. Four of those five voted in favor of that resolution, rejecting the political celebrity of a murderer.

In short, this case is about much more than hyper-technical legal challenges to the imposition of the death penalty. It has become, quite plainly, a cause. So it is with that background that I would like to discuss the nominee's involvement in that matter.

In 2009, Mr. Adegbile was Director of Litigation for the NAACP's legal defense fund, and it was in that role that he worked as an advocate on Abu-Jamal's behalf. The nominee and the legal defense fund first got involved when they volunteered as an amicus and then later as lead counsel for Abu-Jamal's post-conviction proceedings.

In this first phase, the legal defense fund alleged that Philadelphia prosecutors discriminated against African-American jurors in the jury-selection process during the trial. After the Third Circuit rejected that argument, the nominee submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court urging the Court to take the case and hear the same arguments. The Court declined to hear that case.

After this effort failed, in 2011 the legal defense fund signed on as Abu-Jamal's lead counsel for his post-conviction challenges. It was at this point the nominee again challenged the conviction in the Third Circuit but this time under a different theory.

The nominee argued that the jury instructions were constitutionally infirm. The Third Circuit agreed, and the Supreme Court refused to hear further argument.

Now, keep in mind that Abu-Jamal never ran the risk of lacking adequate legal counsel. Highly motivated attorneys, highly motivated law professors, and legions of activists have represented him for years. They have filed literally hundreds of motions and briefs on his behalf. So this isn't a case of the nominee and the legal defense fund intervening to vindicate the rights of an indigent defendant who has been denied due process, nor is this a case of a lawyer stepping in to defend an unpopular client who couldn't otherwise find a lawyer. Abu-Jamal has enjoyed the zealous representation of some of the country's best lawyers for almost three decades.

In short, this is not John Adams defending the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre. That is not what is happening. The first attempt to challenge the conviction was unsuccessful, so the nominee and the legal defense fund redoubled their efforts and mounted a second challenge under a different theory. This was a cause in search of a legal justification.

We know this, of course, because the statements and press releases that the legal defense fund made at the time confirmed the understanding that this was a cause.

The nominee's colleagues and co-counsels explained the legal defense fund's motivations for getting involved in this case at a rally for Abu-Jamal in 2011. A lawyer with the legal defense fund said:

There is no question in the mind of anyone at the legal defense fund that the justice system has completely and utterly failed Mumia Abu-Jamal, and in our view, that has everything to do with race, and that is why the legal defense fund is in this case.

In fact, when the legal defense fund signed on as lead counsel in 2011, their press release declared:

Abu-Jamal's conviction and death sentence are relics of a time and place that was notorious for police abuse and racial discrimination.

Again, this is, in fact, a cause. It was a cause premised on the notion that this country's most notorious cop killer, Mumia Abu-Jamal, was a victim rather than a murderer, and the police officers and prosecutors and the entire judicial system were to blame, not the person who did the killing.

At bottom, this is why the law-enforcement community is so staunchly opposed to this nomination. That is why the Fraternal Order of Police calls this nomination a ``thumb in the eye of our Nation's law enforcement officers.''

That is why Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams wrote this in his letter of opposition:

Despite the overwhelming evidence of guilt, his lawyers have consistently attempted to turn reality on its head, arguing that Abu-Jamal was framed, and that it was he, rather than Officer Faulkner, who was the victim of racism.

District Attorney Williams went on to say:

Aside from being patently false, moreover, these claims are personally insulting to me. As an African-American, I know all too well the grievous consequences of racial discrimination and prejudice. I also know that Abu-Jamal was convicted and sentenced because of the evidence, not because of his race.

Finally, that is why Maureen Faulkner, whose husband was murdered by Abu-Jamal, wrote two letters to the Judiciary Committee, and why she wrote this:

Officers who knew Danny and who, like him, put their lives on the line every day, must now witness Adegbile, a man proud to have chosen to aid the murderer of their friend, singled out for honors and high office by the Government of the United States. It is an abomination to now reward Adegbile as if he had done something wonderful.

So to my colleagues and to the President of this body, for the reasons I have outlined here, I cannot support this nomination. I don't believe he is the right nominee to lead this office at this time. I will oppose this nominee, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Madam President, I would suggest the absence of a quorum.

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