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| November 6th, 2007 |
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Media Contact(s): Jared Whitley (202) 224-5251 |
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COMMITTEE STATEMENT: CONFIRM JUDGE MUKASEY
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Washington - Today Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) gave the following speech before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary regarding the nomination of Michael B. Mukasey to be Attorney General of the United States.
Today, we finally have the opportunity to vote for a man who is superbly qualified, by experience and by character, to lead the Department of Justice.
Today is 46 days since the Senate received the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey to be Attorney General of the United States.
We should approve him without further delay so he can get to work leading the Department and protecting America.
Judge Mukasey’s qualifications and character have never been in doubt.
He has the support of many prominent Democrats and Republicans.
I agree with our distinguished colleague from New York, Senator Schumer, who said last Friday that Judge Mukasey will be a “strong and independent attorney general.”
Then why is he the longest-pending Attorney General nominee in more than 20 years?
Torture is not the real issue.
Judge Mukasey has repeatedly and unequivocally denounced torture.
At his hearing, it is safe to say, he pleasantly surprised some by saying that torture violates not only statues and treaties but the Constitution itself.
As such, Judge Mukasey said, the President cannot authorize it.
Torture is not the real issue.
Nor is waterboarding the real issue.
In his letter of October 30, Judge Mukasey said he finds this interrogation technique personally repugnant and acknowledged that it violates the Detainee Treatment Act.
While he declined to state a premature legal conclusion about whether waterboarding constitutes torture, he has pledged to analyze that question and to change any Justice Department positions or policies that conflict with his conclusion.
In his October 30 letter, he outlined the approach he would take in that analysis.
He may well reach the conclusion that waterboarding constitutes torture, but will do so only after the appropriate process is complete.
Senator Schumer said last Friday that Judge Mukasey has also pledged that if Congress passes a law banning waterboarding, he will enforce it.
Waterboarding is not the real issue.
The real issue here is one that, to be frank, my Democratic colleagues have been raising for a long time and which I urge them to take more seriously today.
The real issue is politicizing the Justice Department.
It politicizes the Justice Department to demand that Judge Mukasey take a politically correct position on waterboarding before he can go through a legally correct process to analyze the issue.
It politicizes the Justice Department to demand that Judge Mukasey take a public position on such an issue for a Department he does not yet run, a position requiring facts he has not yet acquired and legal standards he has not yet applied.
It politicizes the Justice Department to demand that the incoming Attorney General be independent of the Republican President who nominated him but compliant toward the Democratic Senate that would confirm him.
My Democratic colleagues who have emphasized independence so often cannot have it both ways.
They cannot demand that Judge Mukasey make his own legal judgments on issues important to the President but that he make their legal judgments on issues important to them.
Compliance is not independence.
It politicizes the Justice Department to use different confirmation standards for Attorney General nominees of different political parties.
In 1993, when a Democratic Senate considered a Democratic President’s nominee for Assistant Attorney General, one of my Democratic colleagues on this committee said: “The president should get to pick his own team. Unless the nominee is incompetent or some other major ethical or investigative problem arises…the president gets the benefit of the doubt.”
That was the right standard when this committee voted on Janet Reno’s nomination without even waiting for a markup, and it is the right standard today.
Not only is Judge Mukasey more than competent, but not one has even suggested a single ethical or investigative problem.
He meets the standard Democrats applied to Democratic nominees, and should already have been confirmed.
Judge Mukasey is obviously qualified for this position.
He has the integrity and commitment to the rule of the law that my Democratic colleagues have said is essential.
His background as a prosecutor and a judge, and his expertise in national security and terrorism cases, equip him to make independent judgments about the issues facing America at this crucial time in our history.
Last Friday, our distinguished colleague, Senator Feinstein, said that Judge Mukasey has a strong, informed, and independent mind.
She said he “will be a strong Attorney General and will represent the best interests of the American people.”
I agree and urge my colleagues to support him.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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