Senators were on track to approve Loretta Lynch to be the new attorney general, defeating an early filibuster attempt Thursday morning, with a final vote scheduled later in the afternoon on what Democrats said was a major civil rights milestone.
Ms. Lynch, a federal prosecutor in New York, would replace Eric H. Holder Jr. and would be the country’s first black woman to reach the top law enforcement post.
She cleared the filibuster on a 66-34 vote, with Republican opposition directed not so much at Ms. Lynch herself but at President Obama, whose clashes with Congress over immigration, health care and environmental policy she will be tasked with defending.
“I hope she can recover from her testimony where she seemed to embrace the president’s illegal executive action [on immigration] without regard to the fact that it is a constitutional overreach,” said Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who voted against Ms. Lynch.
Mr. Obama had nominated Ms. Lynch in the wake of last year’s elections, hoping for quick action. But Democrats, who controlled the Senate during the lame-duck session of Congress, put off action on her, believing she would easily clear when the GOP took control in January.
Instead she’s languished as both sides clashed over abortion-funding provisions in a bill against human trafficking. An agreement this week finally cleared that snag, setting up the final Lynch vote.
Democrats have called the delays a black mark for Republicans, whom they accused of thwarting civil rights history.
“At long last this embarrassment for the Senate is over and this triumph for the American people will occur,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat.
Ms. Lynch grew up in a North Carolina still struggling with civil rights issues, including at her high school where she was the school’s valedictorian — but officials wary of having a lone black honoree decided she needed to share the top billing with two other students.
She graduated from Harvard College and got her law degree from Harvard Law School, and has twice served as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York — first under President Clinton and beginning again under Mr. Obama.
None of her opponents questioned her qualifications, and she has headed some of the Justice Department’s highest profile cases, including terrorism prosecutions and the case against former Rep. Michael Grimm, a New York Republican who resigned his seat and pleaded guilty.
The opposition to Ms. Lynch instead flowed almost entirely from her boss, Mr. Obama, and his efforts to test the limits of executive power, drawing fierce pushback from Republicans on Capitol Hill who accused him of ignoring the Constitution.
At her confirmation hearing Ms. Lynch defended the Justice Department’s legal reasoning underpinning Mr. Obama’s deportation amnesty programs, and refused to second-guess the president on a series of other actions.
Republicans also demanded to know how Ms. Lynch would be different from Mr. Holder, who has repeatedly clashed with the GOP, accused Mr. Obama’s opponents of being motivated by race, and withheld documents from Congress — resulting in him being the first attorney general in history to be held in contempt of Congress.
At her confirmation hearing and in written responses to followup questions Ms. Lynch insisted she would be different from Mr. Holder, though the only area she specifically identified where she might draw distinctions was on her willingness to be transparent.
Ms. Lynch also couldn’t think of any areas where she had made mistakes other than on cybersecurity, where she said she’s done a great job, but wished she’s gotten on top of the issue even earlier.
Democrats said opposing Ms. Lynch because she defended the president was a troubling precedent to set.
“This defies common sense,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Democrat. “You must vote against a nominee for the Cabinet of the duly elected president of the United States because she agrees with the duly elected president of the United States? Think of the consequences of that vote. Think what that means to the future of advise and consent in the Senate.”
But Republicans said her agreement with Mr. Obama went beyond normal bounds and suggested she would not be the independent officer they insisted the attorney general needs to be.
They contrasted her with Sally Quillian Yates, whom Mr. Obama nominated to be deputy attorney general and who cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on an 18-2 vote Thursday morning, just minutes before the filibuster vote on Ms. Lynch.
Ms. Yates, who is white, is a prosecutor in Georgia, and had strong support of that state’s two Republican senators, which helped her nomination.
During her confirmation hearings she generally defended the president’s policies but did say she viewed the role of the Justice Department as being an independent constitutional authority whose clients are the American people, not the president or Congress.
“This may seem to some like a small point. But it’s important to me,” said Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican and chairman of the committee, who helped shepherd Ms. Yates’s nomination through the panel but said he was opposing Ms. Lynch.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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