Hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee - Opening Statement of Sen. Grassley, Markup on the Nominations of Gorsuch, Rosenstein, and Brand

Hearing

Good morning everyone and thanks for being here.

Today, we have three exceptional nominees on the agenda:
Neil Gorsuch to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
Rod Rosenstein to be the Deputy Attorney General
Rachel Brand to be the Associate Attorney General

All three of them are on the agenda for the first time. I understand that the minority would like to hold them over. Of course, any Member may hold over nominations on the agenda for the first time. All three nominees will be held over one week.

As you all know, last week the Committee held a four day hearing to consider Judge Gorsuch's nomination. He testified for two days and over 20 hours.

Before the hearing started we all knew how qualified the Judge is. His resume speaks for itself. But last week we got to see up-close how thoughtful, articulate, and humble he is. He is clearly deeply committed to being a fair and impartial Judge. And he isn't willing to compromise that independence to win votes in the Senate.

I'll have a lot more to say next week when we debate his nomination in Committee.

Thank you to all my colleagues for working with me to make last week's hearing run smoothly. And thank you to Senator Feinstein and her staff for all your hard work and coordination.

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