Durbin: Selma Anniversary Should Give GOP Pause About Opposing Loretta Lynch
Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch (C) speaks after U.S. President Barack Obama (R) introduced here as his nominee to replace Eric Holder (L) during a ceremony in the Roosevelt Room of the White House November 8, 2014 in Washington, DC.
Photo by Win McNamee/Getty ImagesThe nomination of Loretta Lynch for attorney general has not moved through the Senate quite as quickly as Democrats had hoped. Republicans had long ago turned on outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder; cynically, but realistically, Democrats hoped their desire to see Holder gone would foam the runway for Lynch. "I'm hopeful that her tenure, if confirmed, will restore confidence in the Attorney General as a politically independent voice for the American people," said now-Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, when Lynch was nominated.
Yet Lynch came to the Senate after multiple Republicans had threatened to block any nominee for attorney general who would support the Obama administration's executive actions on immigration. After Lynch's hearings, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul announced that he'd oppose her nomination because of how she'd handled a civil forfeiture case. The scandal over how an HSBC subsidiary allegedly dodged taxes boomeranged on Lynch after Grassley and other Republicans asked why the nominee, as a U.S. attorney, had not scoured HSBC when the scandal emerged.