00:00With that objection. Thank you. Mr. President, Americans want Congress to work.
00:05They want. I have some order in it in the please. Thank you. Go ahead, Senator.
00:09Mr. President, Americans want Congress to work. They want Congress to not just work as in being
00:21here, but work as in to collaborate and cooperate in order to get things done.
00:26But the reason there are such low expectations are because of days like today. My colleagues,
00:35are they proud of this? Is this what they think their constituents want? If you go back to
00:40any state and talk to like normal people, Democrat, Republican, they probably all agree that this
00:47place worked better. So why do my Democratic colleagues seem intent on undermining the normal
00:54operating procedure of the Senate, frankly, grinding us to a halt? Like, who's asking
00:59them to do this? If they go to the states or their Democratic voters say, hey, listen, can
01:03Congress do a worse job? Can you can you become even less effective? Now, if you'd be too embarrassed
01:10to ask your own constituent, you should be embarrassed now. We're seven months into President Trump's
01:17administration. And we have approved zero percent of his nominees by voice vote or unanimous consent.
01:26Now, you may say, well, that's not anything strange. No, it is quite strange. You can see
01:31under H.W. Bush, 98 percent of the nominees voice vote or unanimous consent. President Clinton,
01:38a Democrat, 98 percent. George W. Bush, 90 percent. Barack Obama, 90 percent. Trump won. If you don't
01:45like Trump, you could have stopped then, 65 percent. And then President Biden, 57 percent. And I guess
01:53there's been a decline, but this is an abrupt stop. That's frustrating. Zero percent. Zero percent.
02:05Now, we would all like to be with our family. We'd like to be meeting our constituents. We would like
02:11to find out what's going on in our own districts. But we're having to battle this in order to get some
02:17of President Trump's nominees through. And by the way, as others have emphasized, these are not
02:24controversial nominees. This is like the ambassador to the Vatican. That's about as non-controversial as
02:33you can be. These are like, not the cabinet secretary, not the deputy cabinet secretary,
02:38but a couple of positions below that. And so this is obstruction for the sake of obstruction.
02:44Now, the other thing that concerns me terribly, Roy Blunt, former senator from Missouri, used to say that
03:01whatever one party does to the other party, that party will do it to the other party going forward.
03:08Which is to say that we create precedence in this chamber. That we've always had a precedent of
03:13having a significant percentage of people who have been confirmed by voice voter unanimous consent,
03:19as we've just gone through this chart. But if now we have to grind, grind, grind,
03:26two hours of a debate between when someone is first put up until there's final vote,
03:35but no one in the chamber debates, it's just that for two hours you find something to do,
03:41that will set a precedent. Now, I love the Senate because I love my country. And our founding fathers set
03:50up the Senate to be the place where we would come, we the people, with our representatives would come
03:57and make laws beneficial for our country. I grew up with this incredible esteem of the Senate.
04:06And now we're seeing the Senate ground down, where the committee, the cooperation that allowed people
04:17with different perspectives to come together and find common ground for the benefit of our country
04:23is being exploited merely to delay President Trump's agenda. The ambassador to the Vatican,
04:32putting a stop on his nomination and then his final approval, doesn't really stop the president's agenda.
04:39So it's not just shattering precedents, it's creating new ones. Establishing a pattern where next time,
04:48if Republicans are in the minority, we will, unfortunately, feel motivated to create the same
04:55gridlock that's being created here. I don't know of any American who wants that. I don't know of the
05:02most partisan American who wants that. Because they know when their side's in power next time,
05:07they want to get something done. And by the way, we're talking about the ambassador to the Vatican.
05:13This is not Secretary of Defense. This is not you name the position.
05:23Now, I know my Democratic colleagues care about the institution as much as I. And I appeal to that
05:29concern. I appeal to that sense that we've got to make this place work if it's going to work for the
05:36American people. And we must be careful about what we do, because it will be done under us.
05:47I suppose this could be done in the name of resistance. I would say it's resistance to the
05:53will of the American people. The American people that want the Congress, who want the Senate to function,
05:59to get on to bigger and better things, to not break precedent to set a new precedent,
06:04where in the future we work even less well together.
06:10With that, I yield.
06:16Senator from Connecticut.
06:18Thank you, Mr. President.
06:20In just a little while later this afternoon, we will consider confirmation of Jeanine Pirro
06:27as United States Attorney for the District of Washington, D.C.
06:36Now, I have a particular feeling about appointments as United States Attorney, having served as one
06:44in Connecticut, and having seen how profoundly impactful it can be on the lives of everyday America.
06:53Obviously, it's a position that is integral to justice in the United States. It is the top
07:01federal prosecutor in that district. And in D.C., it is the largest office in the whole country,
07:12and probably one of the two or three most important, because it has jurisdiction over
07:18all of the federal agencies, federal employees, federal issues that arise in this
07:27profoundly significant place.
07:28And like any prosecutor in the federal system, it is a position of absolutely staggering importance and power.
07:43I learned, as United States Attorney, that probably the most important decisions I made
07:48were whether to bring an indictment. That is to say, whether to charge somebody with a crime.
07:53That is to say, whether to charge somebody with a crime. Most, almost all, were convicted.
08:00But, convicted or not, speaking generally, somebody charged with a crime suffers damage
08:09for life. Financial harm, reputational impact, families often disrupted.
08:21And that is no reason to avoid bringing charges, but only to make sure that someone who is making those
08:29final decisions is independent, objective, non-political in the way they go about the job.
08:40Janine Pirro is unqualified to be United States Attorney. She is unfit for this role.
08:47She is simply a loyal political acolyte and sycophant of the President. Loyalty is the reason she's been
08:58nominated. Not experienced. She is not objective. She is not independent. In fact,
09:05she is essentially an entertainer. Nothing wrong with being an entertainer, but not a qualification
09:14for being United States Attorney. And, in fact, on her show, she's made Islamophobic comments so
09:22offensive that Fox News temporarily suspended her from the air. She's promoted a wide variety of
09:31damaging, offensive conspiracy theories, including the thoroughly debunked allocation that some pro-choice
09:38states allowed doctors to kill fully delivered breathing babies. And she was a key figure in promoting
09:47the entirely baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Her public record essentially disqualifies her
09:56from serving as the Chief Federal Prosecutor. And her nomination is more serious and
10:06more profoundly important than just her particular place. It is, in a sense, a symbol of what President
10:21Trump is doing to the United States justice system. My Republican colleagues are simply not willing to put
10:32her or are not only willing to place her at the head of the largest United States Attorney's Office in the country.
10:42Last week, they moved her nomination forward by a party-line vote. They've rallied behind her,
10:50not in spite of her record, but because of it.
10:53Again, simply because she is loyal to the present. So the issue here is not only about her. It's about
11:04whether loyalty will qualify somebody for this kind of powerful position in the United States Department of
11:12Justice, which is supposed to be above politic, when she's demonstrated that, in fact,
11:21she would be totally unfit for any such office. How loyal is she? Well, she was individually discussed
11:35in the defamation lawsuit against Fox News for promoting 2020 election conspiracies. Her totally false
11:45comments were at the center of that defamation case. Fox News canceled an episode of her show
11:51after the 2020 election with a Fox executive producer saying, quote, I don't trust her to be
11:58responsible, end quote. A Fox producer called her, quote, a reckless maniac, end quote, in an internal email.
12:08These were her colleagues, her co-workers, her producers, and one of them asserted that, quote,
12:17she should never be on live television, end quote, and described her draft monologue as, quote,
12:25rife with conspiracy theories. That defamation case ended in a settlement in which Fox News agreed to pay
12:35$787 million, in part because of statements she made on the air. The history of peddling conspiracy
12:44theories on cable news should be fundamentally disqualifying for any prosecutor, let alone the
12:52head of the largest United States Attorney's Office. Her record should preclude her from receiving
12:58even an interview for an assistant U.S. attorney position. Instead, her loyalty at the expense of truth
13:13has won her a nomination for one of the most powerful Department of Justice positions in the whole
13:21country. And her specific record around the work of the very United States Attorney's Office she's now
13:29nominated to lead reveals how unqualified and unsuitable she is for this role. And here's the
13:35most important part of her background. Four and a half years ago, as we all know, rioters stormed the
13:44United States Capitol, contributing to the deaths of Capitol Police, injuring them severely, disrupting
13:53the vote, counting for president, and leaving devastation in their way. The United States Attorney's
14:02Office for D.C. was primarily responsible for bringing the January 6 rioters to justice.
14:09D.C. with praise from both sides of the aisle for the diligent and dedicated work they did to make sure
14:20that justice was done. For years, those prosecutors worked alongside the FBI to investigate, to build cases,
14:32to bring prosecution against the rioters. They didn't choose those roles or assignments.
14:39They were chosen by the Department of Justice to do their duty and enforce the law.
14:49But on her radio show, Janine Pirro agreed with a guest who said,
14:58the Department of Justice prosecutors handling the January 6 cases should be criminally prosecuted.
15:03She said, quote, I absolutely agree with that, end quote. And in her response to this committee's
15:12questions, she failed to disavow this position. In fact, she failed to directly answer whether she
15:21believed federal prosecutors assigned to work on the January 6 cases should themselves be prosecuted. In
15:28other words, she sided with the criminals. She criticized the prosecutors who now will be in the office
15:39that she has been nominated to lead. And her criticism of them
15:45was to side with the conspiracy theorists and the call-in guest to her show as Judge Pirro.
15:57Rather than condemning pardons for people who committed violence against law enforcement,
16:02she simply wrote, quote, the decision to issue a pardon is a power that belongs to the president, end quote.
16:10That's what she answered when she was asked about the pardons for January 6 rioters
16:15who had been convicted of violence against law enforcers.
16:19Again, she refused to answer key questions. And unfortunately, the Judiciary Committee
16:33failed to bring her forward as a witness, despite
16:40our requests, indeed demands that she be a witness in her nomination proceeding. That is
16:50really regrettable on the part of the Judiciary Committee. And I think a
16:57avoidance of responsibility that we owe the American people to scrutinize somebody who plainly raises such
17:07profound questions of qualification, even if you prize loyalty to Donald Trump.
17:19I think this person, whom Donald Trump has nominated to be in this position of trust and
17:27responsibility, plainly is not just unfit, but would disgrace this office and diminish the
17:38credibility of the entire Department of Justice. That's the more profound question here. Whether
17:43someone so unqualified will be confirmed after no testimony, after no adequate consideration,
17:55after simply agreeing because she's loyal to the president. Rather than support the prosecution and
18:05conviction of people who assaulted law enforcement officers, she believes that the federal prosecutors
18:11bringing those cases should themselves be investigated. The United States Attorney's Office who did those cases,
18:21the dedicated professionals who investigated them, and the people of the District of
18:27District of Columbia, indeed, our nation, deserve better. I oppose her nomination, and I urge my colleagues to join me in voting no.
18:40I'll do it in voting no. I'll never leave a comment, and I'm sure I'll be here for you.
18:54Well, it's out. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. We know. I think,
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