Executive Session

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I come to the floor to raise concerns both about the next vote we will take--a vote that will or will not confirm President Trump's nominee Brian Benczkowski to be the Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice--and to express my concern about our President's actions at the NATO summit and his upcoming meeting with Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation.

Let me start with Mr. Benczkowski. I come to the floor to speak in opposition to our proceeding to his confirmation. Mr. Benczkowski has been nominated to serve as an Assistant Attorney General and will be in charge of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Department of Justice.

How big of a division is that--10, 50, 100? It actually has 900 employees and 600 career Federal prosecutors. The U.S. Department of Justice takes up, handles, investigates, and prosecutes cases of an unbelievable range, complexity, and sophistication in every district court in the entire United States. One would have to assume that to take on such a significant--such an important--role as overseeing, supervising, and managing 900 professionals and 600 career prosecutors that Mr. Benczkowski must be very qualified to serve.

As someone who is himself an admitted member of the Delaware bar and serves on the Judiciary Committee, I hesitate to suggest that I have the qualifications because I have never tried a criminal case in court, so I am not sure how I would directly supervise a whole team of career Federal prosecutors. Mr. Benczkowski has never prosecuted a case. He has never supervised a criminal prosecution. In fact, he has not ever appeared in Federal court, by his own admission, except for on one or two limited occasions in order to address routine scheduling or other matters.

Mr. Benczkowski is before us, in his having been nominated to supervise the single largest, most complex, most sophisticated law firm in America for criminal matters on behalf of the people of the United States, without his having the relevant experience. In my view, that alone is disqualifying. That alone should lead us to pause in terms of whether we should confirm this man to lead the Criminal Division as the Assistant AG.

Virtually all of the last several Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorneys General for the Criminal Division have had extensive prior experience as prosecutors, as former U.S. attorneys, as career or elected folks who have either been within the Department of Justice or have been attorneys general. This is for good reason, for the Federal Government holds enormous power and discretion when it comes to criminal prosecutions. The Assistant Attorney General is responsible for overseeing offices that investigate and prosecute money laundering, fraud, organized crime, public corruption, and a host of other serious offenses. It is that AAG who ultimately signs off on some of the edgiest or most difficult or most questionable prosecutorial decisions. Every American should expect that the person who is nominated for this important job is qualified to meet the weighty demands of this job.

Secondly, every American is entitled to the assurance that the Department of Justice will be independent and that criminal prosecutions will rise and fall with the facts and the law and nothing else. Sadly, Mr. Benczkowski fails to pass this test too.

He led the Department of Justice's transition team for the Trump administration. He previously served with our now-Attorney General and former Senator Jeff Sessions. Yet, after leaving the transition team for the Trump administration, he went on to private practice in a law firm where he represented Alfa-Bank, which is one of the largest Russian banks. It is a Russian bank which, through its owner, a Russian oligarch, has close ties to Vladimir Putin.

At times, it is hard for me to believe how many people immediately around the President, his Cabinet, his campaign team, or around him personally have had concerning, inexplicable, difficult-to-understand ties to Russian entities, but here we are again. To be frank, I am concerned that Mr. Benczkowski's position--if confirmed by this Senate in just 5 minutes in a vote we are about to take--could enable him to directly interfere with Special Counsel Mueller's ongoing investigation into Russian interference.

I have raised concerns about this, about ensuring that Attorney General Sessions fully complies with his recusal from matters related to the last election. Adding Mr. Benczkowski to the mix in his absolutely central role as the Assistant Attorney General who will oversee the Criminal Division raises these concerns even further. Adding another senior person to the Justice Department's leadership team who raises these concerns about real independence gives me real pause.

I joined all of the Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats in a letter that asked the administration to move Mr. Benczkowski to some other position and to send us a qualified, capable nominee who does not have concerning Russian connections. Unfortunately, the administration hasn't done that. My friends on the other side of the aisle seem poised to confirm this gentleman today.

NATO

Mr. President, this concerns me more than ever because of what has just been said by our President in Europe to our vital NATO allies. There is a number I have been holding in my heart this week--1,044. That is the number of NATO troops who have died in combat in Afghanistan while having served shoulder to shoulder with the United States.

President Trump is correct to raise the issue of contributions to our mutual defense. President Trump has had a real impact. He has gotten our NATO allies to up the ante by more than $14 billion in the last year and a half. I wish he had gone to Brussels and simply said: Thank you, folks, for increasing your contributions. Now let's focus on interoperability and deployability and on linking arm-to-arm and facing our real adversary--Russia.

The NATO alliance exists for mutual defense. How can you successfully defend when you can't successfully identify your real adversary?

I have just returned from a bipartisan trip to visit Sweden, Denmark, Latvia, and Finland--two NATO allies and two very close security partners. All four of these countries have fought alongside us in Afghanistan and have suffered combat deaths. For two of those countries, they have been the first combat deaths since the Second World War.

When our President makes misleading, mistaken comments that NATO doesn't pay its fair share or is using us as a piggybank or, as he said in a campaign-style rally in Montana, that NATO is killing us, it really weighs upon the hearts of our vital allies that have sent their young men and women to serve alongside ours and, in 1,044 cases, to die.

We need to respect our vital allies and recognize that for seven decades, our NATO allies and our security partners--whether the 4 I just visited with the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee or the others among the 29 in NATO--are stepping up their investments, but they have already paid a price that few other countries have paid of sending their sons and daughters, alongside ours, into combat.

Rather than question their commitment to our mutual security, I wish our President would celebrate that they have increased their investments, thank them for their strong partnerships and alliances, and begin facing our country toward its true adversary--Russia.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source