The Senate Judiciary Committee cleared Sally Quillian Yates Thursday to be the next deputy attorney general, granting her bipartisan support that stood in stark contrast to the bitter partisan divide over Loretta Lynch, the women facing a final vote on becoming the top official at the Justice Department.
Ms. Yates was approved by the committee on an 18-2 vote, winning praise from Democrats who said she was qualified, and from Republicans who said she showed a willingness to be independent of the White House in a way that Ms. Lynch did not.
“The attorney general is not the president’s lawyer,” said Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, who voted for Ms. Yates, saying she grasped that concept while Ms. Lynch, whom he planned to oppose, did not.
Ms. Yates’s nomination now heads to the full Senate, where her approval is assured, given the support she had in committee.
Ms. Lynch, meanwhile, faces a vote later Thursday in the full Senate. If confirmed, she would be the first black woman to hold the top law enforcement post, earning a promotion from her current post as federal prosecutor in New York.
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.
He said Ms. Yates also showed a willingness to be forthcoming on certain questions, including confirming that the Justice Department gave legal advice by email to the White House on the prisoner exchange involving five Taliban warriors and Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, in May and June of last year. The swap happened on May 31, which Mr. Grassley said suggests the legal wrangling with the Justice Department continued even after the exchange went down.
Ms. Yates, who has been serving as acting deputy attorney general, said the department’s Office of Legal Council won’t release the substance of those emails because they are considered confidential legal advice.
“I do not intend to revisit that decision,” she said in written responses to questions from Mr. Grassley.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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