Senate Republicans buck blue slips on US attorney nominees

WASHINGTON (CN) — A group of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee left an age-old Capitol Hill tradition by the wayside Thursday, refusing to back a pair of U.S. attorney nominees who enjoyed the approval of Iowa’s Senate delegation.

The mini-revolt came as the panel met to consider a laundry list of judicial nominees which included Matthew Gannon, tapped to become a U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Iowa, and David Waterman, selected by the White House to fill a similar vacancy in the Southern District of Iowa.

Gannon and Waterman represented a compromise between the Biden administration and the Hawkeye State’s Republican senators, said Senator Chuck Grassley during remarks at the business meeting Thursday morning.

Grassley pointed out that he and fellow Iowa Senator Joni Ernst had returned blue slips — historically an avenue for home state senators to weigh in on judicial nominees — on both would-be federal prosecutors.

However, the Iowa senator noted that some of his fellow Republican lawmakers had signaled they wouldn’t support Gannon and Waterman’s nominations despite the blue slip support.

“I’ve been told that some of the colleagues on my side of the aisle may vote against them,” Grassley said of the nominees. “I hope that they would take into consideration that when we have blue slips from two Republican senators of the same state, I’ve tried to honor that compromise, and I’d appreciate the same respect.”

Grassley’s plea went unheeded by several committee Republicans.

Five GOP lawmakers voted against Gannon’s nomination, including Senators Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.

Blackburn, notably, had railed on the Biden administration during a Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday for what she said was the White House’s refusal to respect the blue slipping process for a circuit court nominee.

Every Democrat on the committee voted in favor of Gannon, whose nomination was advanced to the full Senate on a 16-5 vote.

Lee was the only lawmaker to vote against Waterman, who was favorably reported out of the Judiciary Committee on a 20-1 vote.

Senator Dick Durbin, the Judiciary Committee’s Democratic chair and a longtime supporter of the blue slipping process for certain nominees, thanked Grassley for his work to reach a compromise with the White House.

The Senate majority whip also took aim at Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, who has long blocked the confirmation of U.S. attorney nominees in protest of the Justice Department’s prosecution of former President Trump.

“I hope he’ll reconsider,” Durbin said. “We need good people from both sides of the aisle to serve in these capacities.”

Carl Tobias, chair of the University of Richmond School of Law, said it was unusual to see committee Republicans buck the blue slip approval of a colleague — especially a senior lawmaker and former Judiciary Committee chair such as Grassley.

“I don’t know what’s going on there,” he said. “Maybe it’s a bit of a protest … or it’s just lockstep voting, which the GOP likes to do sometimes.”

Meanwhile, the Judiciary Committee on Thursday advanced Nancy Maldonado, tapped by the White House to fill a vacancy on the Seventh Circuit.

Maldonado, who cleared the panel on a party-line 11-10 vote, got a grilling last month from committee Republicans who raised concerns about what they said was a significant backlog of cases on her docket as a judge on the Northern District of Illinois.

The nominee explained at the time that she was presented with hundreds of pending cases when she joined the bench in 2022 and that she had whittled those down significantly.

Durbin on Thursday further defended Maldonado’s record, pointing out that she had ruled on nearly a thousand cases and had yet to be reversed by a higher court.

Lawmakers also approved several district court nominees, including Sparkle Sooknanan, appointed to the District of the District of Columbia.

Sooknanan, previously a partner at law firm Jones Day, cleared the Judiciary Committee on another 11-10 party-line vote. Republicans, namely Hawley, raised concerns about the nominee’s work representing hedge fund investors working in Puerto Rico.

Hawley accused Sooknanan of helping accelerate the U.S. territory’s financial woes by working alongside investors who he said were “trying to extract payments from Puerto Rico during a debt crisis.”

While he said Sooknanan was free to represent whoever she wanted as an attorney, he questioned the nominee’s judgment.

“There’s no doubt about it, she’s a good lawyer for her clients,” Hawley said. “I just think what she did is objectionable.”

Sooknanan, for her part, has rejected claims from Republicans that she was lead counsel on the Jones Day team representing the Puerto Rico investors.

Tobias observed that, despite Republican objections, both Maldonado and Sooknanan would likely be confirmed by the full Senate.

“There’s going to be squawking about Maldonado,” he said, “but I think she’ll make it.”

As for Sooknanan, Tobias argued that, even if lawmakers found her work at Jones Day objectionable, it likely wouldn’t cloud her path to confirmation.

“As long as the Democrats are healthy and voting, I don’t see a problem,” he said.

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