Executive Session

Floor Speech

EXECUTIVE SESSION -- (Senate - March 12, 2009)

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I want to acknowledge the great leadership of Chairman Leahy in his work in getting this very important nomination to the floor of the Senate. I rise once again in support of David Ogden to be the next Deputy Attorney General of the United States of America.

When I drove in to work today, I heard on the news about new developments in the Madoff case, about how some people had thought $50 billion had been lost in this country, lost to investors, lost to people who had nothing left, lost to some of the charities and charitable organizations in this country who, during this difficult time, are trying to help people in need. They thought it was $50 billion, but now it was likely $65 billion was lost because of one man, one man who committed such fraud--one man. That is what is going on in this country today--$65 billion went through the fingers of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and now it is being prosecuted under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department of the United States.

Look at the other things going on in this country. We have billions of dollars coming out of very important investments in infrastructure and broadband and jobs in new energy in this country. But it is an unprecedented investment in this country. It is something like $700 billion or $800 billion going out there, and you have the funds being used to help some of the credit markets get going again. We all know when you put money like that out on the market, there are going to be people who try to do bad things. There are going to be people who will try to steal that money, and we need a Justice Department that will hold accountable these people who are getting the money; a Justice Department that will watch over the taxpayers' money, make sure people like Madoff get prosecuted. That is what we need in this country.

When you see the difficult economic time we are in--people without jobs, people who are desperate--it is no surprise oftentimes you see an increase in economic crimes. We see that happening today.

We look at all those factors--Government taxpayer money going out on the street, the discovery of cases of people who have been ripping people off so long that it is only when economic times get bad that you actually see there is embezzlement going on, and then the natural, sad, and unfortunate increase in crime because of difficult economic times. All that is going on, and that is why I say we need a fully functioning Justice Department. That means we need a Deputy Attorney General for that Justice Department.

Yesterday, at our Judiciary Committee, the chairman himself said Eric Holder, the Attorney General, is all alone up there. He needs help. It is time to move these nominees.

That is why I question why people at this point would be wanting to delay his process, would want to not put someone who is clearly qualified to do this job into the Justice Department. We need to fill this post right now, and I have full confidence David Ogden is the right man at the right time. Why do I know this?

As I said yesterday, we had a great attorney general's office in Minnesota for years and years under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and then something happened. A Republican-appointed U.S. attorney, Tom Heffelfinger, was a friend of mine, U.S. attorney under George Bush I and II, who left of his own accord. When he left he found out his name was on a list to be fired. He was replaced with someone who didn't have management experience, and that office nearly blew up over a 2-year period with one person in charge.

Now under Attorney General Mukasey we at least have some peace in that office; things have improved. But I saw firsthand, when you put someone who is not necessarily qualified in a job, when you put someone in who is not putting the interests of the State first, I can see what happened. So Eric Holder and his deputies and those who work for him have a big job on their hands.

They not only have these white-collar crimes and these enormous issues to deal with, they also have a morale issue in the Justice Department. And no one, no one says that is not true.

The way you fix morale in an institution as big as the Justice Department is you put people in place who have the respect of those who are working for them. Look at the numbers. The Department of Justice has more than 100,000 employees and a budget exceeding $25 billion.

Every single Federal law enforcement reports to the Deputy Attorney General, the nomination we are considering today, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, including the Bureau of Prisons, and all 93 U.S. Attorneys Offices in this country.

So what do we have here in David Ogden? Well, we have someone who has broad experience in law and in government: went to Harvard Law School, clerked for Justice Harry Blackmun--a Minnesotan, may I add--he has been in the public sector as a key person in the Justice Department under Attorney General Reno. He is someone who also has had private sector experience. I personally like that, when someone has been in Government and they have also had some private sector experience representing private clients as well. He is an openminded and moderate lawyer with broad support from lawyers of all political and judicial philosophies. So here you have someone with 6 years of leadership in the Department when the Department's morale was, by all accounts, good. We need to put him back in that Department.

I know that people on the other side of the aisle--there are a few of them--have raised issues about clients he had in the past. I can tell you as a lawyer, I think any lawyer--and there are plenty of lawyers in this Chamber--has, in fact, represented clients they might not quite agree with, and they need to make sure the ethical rules are followed.

I know as a prosecutor I chose to represent the State. But there was no one I admired more than those defense lawyers who were representing people who were charged with crimes. I did not choose to do that side, but many people did. In our system in the United States of America, when someone gets in trouble or someone needs a lawyer, that is your job as a lawyer. I think that if we use some kind of standard that we are going to throw people out of this Chamber because of clients they had represented whom we did not agree with or things they personally had done, it would be a very different Chamber.

I think people should be very careful about charges they make and decisions they make about reasons. They can oppose a nomination of someone if they want, but it better be for the right reasons. I believe we have the right reasons here.

I know Chairman Leahy just quoted this, but it is very important to remember. At his own confirmation hearing, Chief Justice Roberts said:

The principle that you don't identify the lawyer with the particular views of the client, or the views that the lawyer advances on behalf of a client, is critical to the fair administration of justice.

He went on to say:

It was my view that lawyers don't stand in the shoes of their clients, and that good lawyers can give advice and argue any side of a case. It has not been my general view that I sit in judgment on clients when they come to me. I viewed that as the job of the Court when I was a lawyer. And just as someone once said, you know, it's the guilty people who really need a good lawyer, I also view that I don't evaluate whether I as a judge would agree with a particular position when somebody comes to me for what I did, which was provide legal advice and assistance.

So that is what we are talking about here. We have someone in this candidate who has broad support from people who have served in his role under both Democratic and Republican Attorneys General. We have someone who has the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police, a major law enforcement organization, and someone who has the endorsement of the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

While at the Department of Justice, David Ogden also led the Government's defense of various antipornography statutes against constitutional attack, even arguing forcefully against the positions taken by some of those people he had formerly represented.

For example, while at the Civil Division, David Ogden defended the Child Online Protection Act of 1998, which aimed to protect children from harmful material on the Internet by requiring pushers of obscene material to restrict their sites from access by minors. Under David Ogden, the Civil Division of the Justice Department aggressively defended that statute.

While he was head of the Civil Division, David Ogden also defended the Child Pornography Prevention Act, which expanded the ban on child pornography to cover virtual child pornography. I know this as a prosecutor. I know how damaging this is. We had cases where people who were preying on children would actually see their images on the Internet, would figure out who they are. We had one case where we went after someone who met a kid at the mall whom he met on the Internet. Then the police looked at all of those images that were on that guy's Internet site, and they actually traced them to another kid who did not even know her picture was on that Internet site. That is what we are talking about--explicit images that appear to depict minors but were produced without using any real children, or perhaps using a real child and putting them in the imagery, computer-generated imagery. That is what David Ogden did, he protected these statutes. He defended these statutes, and he will continue to do that at the Department of Justice.

This strong support for families and children is why David Ogden received the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's endorsement, the Boys and Girls Club of America's endorsement, and, of course, because of his work with law enforcement, the Fraternal Order of Police and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. You think these organizations just come and willy-nilly put their names on an endorsement, those organizations, venerable organizations that have been here for so long? No. They would not put their name on the endorsement of anyone who did not consider the protection of children as one of their paramount goals. They know David Ogden will do that. They know what I know: David Ogden is a man of integrity and commitment to the rule of law. He is someone who will work with our Attorney General, Eric Holder, to restore credibility to the Justice Department, to restore morale, to make it the kind of place where lawyers, the kids coming out of law school, say: That is where I want to work. I want to go work for Eric Holder and David Ogden.

That is what we need restored in our Justice Department. That is why we need to move this along the Senate floor.

I yield the floor.

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