Nomination of Kristen M. Clarke

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, it is a real honor to be rising today to speak in advance of the vote on Kristen Clarke's nomination to serve as the Attorney General of the Department of Justice.

If she is confirmed, Kristen Clarke will be tasked with overseeing the Justice Department's work to protect the civil rights of all Americans.

I have known Kristen Clarke for years. I have worked with her. I know her, and I can tell you that there can be no one better for this job.

To say that Kristen Clarke has an impressive resume is a gross understatement. She started her career at the Justice Department in the Civil Rights Division. She worked with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She led the Civil Rights Bureau for the State of New York Attorney General's Office and most recently served as president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

No one could blame Kristen Clarke, after this entire career of service and all that she has given, if she decided to take a step back and find a less demanding job, perhaps a far more lucrative job. But Ms. Clarke has dedicated herself to the highest principles of our Nation--indeed, to the founding ideals of our country, formed with the Bill of Rights, focusing on this idea of civil rights for all.

This is not just her job. This has been her calling. This is her consistent conviction--to serve, to sacrifice for our Nation's most sacrosanct ideals.

She has chosen to serve this country now at a time when we need her leadership more than ever. She is an asset to our country, and I believe she will serve with extraordinary distinction as a guardian of our civil rights.

We need her experience. We need her expertise. We need her heart, her commitment, her deep thoughtfulness

She is the daughter of immigrants, and after growing up in public housing, in a low-income household, Ms. Clarke made it to some of our most prestigious institutions and made it her cause to make the best out of herself. She is an incredible success story. She is a person who has overcome tremendous odds and advanced herself, not just for personal excellence but for public service. This makes her, in my book, a champion.

Yet there are still those in this confirmation process who want to say that Ms. Clarke is the wrong person for the job. They are actually using smear tactics and lies to try to misrepresent who Ms. Clarke is as a person. There is a saying, ``Let the work I have done speak for me,'' and I wish folk would listen.

She has prosecuted hate crimes. She has defended people's voting rights. She has fought against religious discrimination. She has dedicated her career to the cause of equal justice under law.

Ms. Clarke is the right person for this job. She is exactly who we need. At a time when we are confronting rising hate crimes in America, dramatically more instances of vandalism and violence against Asian Americans, against Jewish Americans, against transgender Americans, we need someone leading the Civil Rights Division who will stand up for all Americans, who has experience prosecuting hate crimes and makes it clear in this Nation that all are created equal and endowed by their Creator with fundamental civil rights. That is who she is now and who she has been for her entire career.

There are folks and forces working to strip away and weaken and undermine these fundamental rights. We see efforts to weaken our democracy, to threaten our principles. We need someone who will stand up and affirm who we are as a people--a nation that believes in robust voting rights, a nation that believes in the equal dignity of all people, a nation that believes in protecting religious liberty. We need a champion now as much as ever. We need Kristen Clarke leading the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice.

And it is not just me saying that. It is just not Democrats saying that. There are over 70 bipartisan former State attorneys general. We see police leaders, law enforcement leaders endorsing her, prosecutors endorsing her, the Anti-Defamation League and 69 different local, State, and national Jewish organizations, all agreeing that Kristen Clarke is the right person to stand for us, to work for us, to fight for us, to champion for our precious civil rights at the Department of Justice.

So many different individuals from all across the political landscape, from all different backgrounds, and so many organizations representing all of our diversity are speaking out in a chorus of conviction about not just how good Kristen Clarke is but how urgent her nomination is because of who she has shown herself to be time and again: an unassailable, impressive career of service, service, service. She is and has been a servant leader for all of her career; a person of profound integrity; someone whose passion, whose sacrifice, whose struggle in the pursuit of justice has already made this Nation better.

I will say something on a personal note in closing. I have worked with Kristen Clarke for years now on things that we have done together, like a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill.

I had the occasion years ago of meeting her when she was out in Washington with her son. He was a young guy, not that tall. Then, during her hearings in the Judiciary Committee, I saw her again present herself in an extraordinarily powerful manner, with grace and expertise, but I saw that young man now had grown up. He is a big guy. And it would be a leap of ego for me to say that I saw myself in this young man because he is probably a lot smarter than I was when I was his age and clearly is a better athlete, even though I will say for the record that the older I get, the better I am in sports.

But I think about her career, and then I align it to what she has done in raising a young Black man in America. While I couldn't project myself onto him, I thought a lot about my mom in her. My mom raised my brother and me in a nation that strove to be who we say we are, a nation of liberty and justice for all. But where she knew we were falling short, she didn't raise us to be bitter; she raised us to be better. She raised us by setting an example, a woman who--from sitting in at a lunch counter to desegregate a restaurant, to helping organize the March on Washington, she showed me by example. As James Baldwin has said, children are never good at listening to their elders, but they never fail to imitate them.

I want you all to know that in Kristen Clarke, we have an extraordinary American, an extraordinary person, and a great mom. And I know what she has done with her life. She has lived perhaps with the greatest principle of all, which is for us in this generation to make a better way for the next, for us to make a more perfect Union, for us to understand that the arc of the moral universe is indeed long but we must bend it more towards justice.

I tell my colleagues and urge you to confirm her to this sacrosanct and urgent position today because I am confident to the core of my being that she will not just make us proud, she will not just defend those who are having their rights trampled or their dignity marginalized, but that she will make a better way for an America that fulfills its promise, still not yet achieved, for us to be a nation with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Mr. President.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source