Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I rise today to offer briefly my remarks on the nomination of William Barr to serve as Attorney General of the United States.

This past Thursday, when the Judiciary Committee of the Senate considered him, I was absent, being the cochair of the National Prayer Breakfast. I would like to offer my conclusions briefly here on the floor.

I have weighed carefully over several weeks William Barr's nomination to serve as the next Attorney General. Initially, I have to say, I was greatly encouraged that the President nominated a nominee whose service had included leadership roles in the Justice Department, including Attorney General of the United States.

However, I believe my responsibility to assess Mr. Barr's candidacy requires me to consider his entire record, including his recent writings, his statements, and his work, and to focus on his ability to actually meet the test of our current time. Having met with him in person, having questioned him during the Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearing, having reviewed his record, and having reviewed his written answers to questions submitted for the record, I ultimately believe Mr. Barr does not meet this test. I am not confident that he will uphold the Attorney General's critical role in defending the Department of Justice as an institution and in ensuring that the special counsel's investigation proceeds with independence and, by so doing, restores the trust of the American people in the rule of law.

In weighing his nomination, the memo Mr. Barr chose to author in June 2018--and to submit--criticizing the special counsel's investigation into obstruction of justice, I concluded was significant and could not be ignored. Mr. Barr tried to narrow or minimize the import of this memo by saying it was a specific application to a particular statute. The fact remains that his memo is rooted in and embraces an exceptionally broad theory of executive power that could threaten not only the special counsel's investigation but a lot of our current understanding of the scope and reach of Executive power.

When I asked him if he had sent other lengthy, detailed legal memos he had researched and written himself to the Department of Justice as a private citizen, he could only cite that one memo from this year, dealing critically with the special counsel's investigation.

At his nomination hearing in the committee, I sought simple and concrete assurances from Mr. Barr that he would give the special counsel's ongoing investigation the independence and separation from partisan politics it needs and deserves. In some instances I was genuinely encouraged by his answers. I was glad to hear a forceful answer from Mr. Barr that he would not fire the special counsel without cause and would resign rather than do so, if so ordered.

On other issues, however, he failed to give the sort of simple and clear commitment that former Attorney General Elliot Richardson gave at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee during the period of an important investigation in the 1970s. Mr. Barr would not commit to following the guidance of career DOJ ethics officials on whether he should recuse himself. He would not commit to deferring to special counsel Mueller's investigative decisions. Finally, he would not commit to making special counsel Mueller's final report public. In essence, Mr. Barr is asking the American people and those of us who represent them to trust him to do the right thing. There are reasons to believe that he will, but there are, as I have laid out briefly, reasons to be gravely concerned that he will not.

Something my predecessor here in the Senate, Senator Joe Biden, expressed in voting to confirm him back in 1991, was his grave concerns about his expansive view of Executive power, but that was a very different time in our history, with a different Court and a different context.

I think we must be clear-eyed about the moment our country faces and the Attorney General's potentially pivotal role in ensuring the integrity of the rule of law and the institutions of our democracy. I believe it is my responsibility in the Senate to protect the special counsel investigation, to ensure that other ongoing Federal investigations are not interfered with because of a narrow or partisan purpose, and to safeguard the rule of law.

If Mr. Barr is confirmed, I hope he will prove me wrong. I hope he will demonstrate to the American people of all parties and backgrounds that he will put the interests of our democracy above the moment and partisan priorities. I hope he will prove to be a terrific, solid, and reliable steward for the ongoing investigation Special Counsel Mueller is leading into Russian interference in the 2016 election. If so, I will gladly put aside our policy differences to work with him for the good of the American people during this critical time, but I regret I have reached the conclusion that I cannot support his nomination this week.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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