Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, the Rules Committee will mark up Senator Lankford's resolution tomorrow to change the rules on the consideration of nominees to benefit the Senate majority. Of course, the majority in the Senate can already approve of a nomination on a party-line vote for all nominees up to and including now the Supreme Court since Leader McConnell elected to change those rules last year.

Why the need for further erosions to minority rights in the Senate? The Republicans argue it is because they are facing ``historic'' obstruction of the President's nominees.

A few points on that: First and foremost, the truth is the Democrats have cooperated with the majority on noncontroversial nominees, like career ambassadorships and civil servants, for a long time now. Before each recess, there is a long list of names that is approved. Before the last recess, the Senate had confirmed nearly as many nominations in 2018 as President Obama had confirmed in the analogous year of 2010. Let me repeat that. Before the last recess, the Senate had confirmed almost the exact same number of nominees in 2018 as President Obama had confirmed in 2010, the second year of his Presidency.

So this idea that it is historic--bunk. You can tell it is bunk because at the same time our Republicans and even the President himself, on some days, complain about obstruction, on other days, the President and the Vice President are boasting about how many judges they have filled on the bench.

This morning, President Trump said:

We put [on] a tremendous amount of [Federal] district [court] judges. We are setting records.

I say to my Republican friends and the President: You can't have it both ways--on the one hand, historic obstruction and, on the other, a record pace of confirmations that you brag to your base about. You can't have it both ways. It is hypocrisy.

A second point: The Republican majority has already taken brazen steps during this Congress to limit minority rights on nominations. I mentioned the leader breaking the rules on Supreme Court nominees. Let's not forget that he broke the rules after letting Merrick Garland sit there while not allowing a nomination. It takes a lot of gall to complain about obstruction when Leader McConnell opened the gates to obstruction--made obstruction his watchword--when he did what he did to Merrick Garland. He didn't stop. The Republicans have not stopped this year. The Republicans have engaged in hardball tactics at the district and circuit court levels.

Here is what happened. Take the Republican seat that is vacant on the Seventh Circuit. Because Senator Leahy--then-chairman--and, later, Senators Hatch and, I believe, Grassley honored the blue slip, a seat in the Seventh Circuit that belongs to Wisconsin was held open for 6 years by their refusing to approve two nominees by President Obama. Now the President has nominated a very conservative judge, Michael Brennan, who has failed to earn the recommendation of the bipartisan commission that is respected in Wisconsin and was set up by both Senators Baldwin and Johnson--one a Democrat, one a Republican--to recommend Federal nominees. Yet this administration has no known concern about the real qualifications of the judges as long as they meet the hard-right checklist.

Despite the fact that Senator Baldwin has not returned a blue slip for Mr. Brennan, Chairman Grassley has moved him out of committee anyway. This is the second time Chairman Grassley has ignored the blue slip tradition. The blue slip tradition was faithfully honored by Senator Leahy when he was chairman. Our Republican colleagues have used it to an extent that, certainly, would be ``historic'' obstruction. For 6 years, a seat was vacant on the circuit court, and it was not the only one that had had long-term vacancies. Now, all of a sudden, because the Democrats want to discuss this, mull this for a few days, Senator Lankford wants to change the rules. I know he only came to the Senate in 2014, but he ought to look a bit at the history before he gets into high dudgeon.

The issue of nominations has been fraught, and it is true there have been escalations on both sides. I am the first to say that. Despite the rhetoric from the majority party, the Democrats have worked in good faith this year to clear noncontroversial nominations expeditiously. When nominees require vetting, the Senate should have the tools to consider them thoroughly because, clearly, this administration is not taking the task of vetting seriously.

This is a final argument--and there are many good ones I would like to make. The Trump administration has done the worst job of vetting its nominees of any administration I can remember. It seems a slapdash process. It has had to withdraw the nominee for the Labor Department because he was not properly vetted; it has fired the Secretaries of HHS, State, and the VA; and it has faced a host of other controversies with staff and turnover. I dare say, if Mr. Pruitt had been properly vetted, he may not have been nominated given what we have found out.

Now we hear that the new nominee for the VA Secretary--the President's personal doctor--is on hold because of some troubling allegations. How did he get through the process with all of these allegations not even having been made public? My guess--there was not proper vetting. I was not there, but it is speculative that, maybe, one day, the President, who we know acts on impulse, had this nominee in the room--his doctor--and he said: Hey, let's put you up without any vetting.

The President is putting forward nominees without appropriate vetting. It is our job to vet, and we will not be rushed through, particularly when this administration has had such a poor record of looking at the qualifications and the problems that each nominee has brought. More than ever, with this President, it is the Senate's job to advise and consent, not to be a rubberstamp. The rule change that is being proposed by Senator Lankford is totally unmerited, inadvisable, and lacks any knowledge of history of the Senate.

You know, we are trying to return to some comity here. The omnibus bill was very good work among Speaker Ryan, Leader McConnell, Leader Pelosi, and me. We are going to meet in a little while to talk about doing the appropriations process in regular order and going back to the days when we did that, which I know our majority leader sincerely wants to do, as do I, as does Senator Shelby, as does Senator Leahy. Something like this--so partisan, so unfair, and so unacknowledging of the history that has come before--doesn't help the sense of comity in the Senate.

I urge Republicans and Democrats alike on the Rules Committee to reject this terribly ill-advised proposal. Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein

Madam President, on another matter, over the last few months, House Republicans have heaped enormous pressure on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in a transparent attempt to bully him into providing documents that are pertinent to an ongoing investigation--something we have hardly ever seen before, something that really gets in the way of law enforcement doing its job. Representative Nunes, who has shown his partisanship repeatedly, and others have gone so far as to threaten Mr. Rosenstein with contempt of Congress and even impeachment if he doesn't hand over former FBI Comey's memos, FISA Court documents, and other information that is related to Mueller's investigation into foreign interference. Mr. Rosenstein gave them that information, which, of course, was leaked afterward to the press.

It is not Justice Department protocol or any other prosecutor's protocol to share information that is pertinent to an ongoing investigation. It just welcomes interference. That is true even with the most objective of those who get the information, and I think 95 percent of America believes Congressman Nunes is not objective. It is not hard to understand why we don't do this. Yet several House Republicans have smeared Mr. Rosenstein and have even threatened his job unless he breaks the longstanding prosecutorial guidelines which will force him to give them information they can twist into political ammunition. What Representative Nunes and others have been doing is disgraceful, just disgraceful, and not consistent with our being a democracy, where there is the rule of law. It is more consistent with the bullying attitude that we see in nondemocratic countries.

Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein is doing his level best to honor the integrity of the Russia probe while being dragged through the mud by the President and his allies in Congress. He is a strong man. He has done an excellent job, and he is doing his best now. He is doing exactly what a Deputy Attorney General should be doing. Mr. Rosenstein deserves our respect--all parties' respect, the whole country's respect--for his efforts in being honest and transparent with Congress while maintaining the integrity of the Russia probe.

Even so, as a columnist in the Washington Post put it this morning: ``It's a miserable day at the Justice Department when the deputy attorney general is forced at gunpoint''--bullying, threatening--``to turn over important evidence in a pending criminal investigation.'' The ``bullying'' and ``threatening'' are my parenthetical words.

It continues to be a real disgrace for House Republicans to engage in such bare-knuckle tactics in a relentless effort to deter and kick up dust around the Mueller investigation. Our fellow Republicans, the bar across the country, and the country itself--the public--should resist this kind of bullying and pressure. It is so un-American, so against the rule of law, so against how democratic republics work.

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