Amy Klobuchar promises "very thorough investigation" of Trump's Supreme Court nominee
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, says she expects the Trump administration’s temporary ban on new arrivals from a number of Muslim-majority countries will complicate the confirmation of Sen. Jeff Session to be the next attorney general.
“This is something where you have the acting attorney general has now been fired – Sen. Sessions, I don’t believe, was involved in this executive order,” Klobuchar said on “CBS This Morning” on Tuesday. “But he is being nominated to take over a Justice Department where we want to make sure politics are not involved.
And you have an order that has affected hundreds of thousands of people all over the world – law abiding people, people that followed the rules, with no review by the agencies involved, the law enforcement that enforce the law… So of course I think that’s going to be one of the major topics discussed as the senators announce their votes.”
Sessions is expected to be confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday.
Klobuchar, a co-sponsor of a Senate bill to repeal the ban, also indicated that she’s hopeful that Republicans could sign on to legislation that would stifle the adminstration’s efforts to restrict arrivals. She pointed to criticisms of the ban from Republican Sens. John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and Rob Portman to say that “senators from really across the spectrum” are skeptical the executive order was a good idea.
Klobuchar also defended Sally Yates,the acting attorney general who was fired by President Trump after she announced she would not defend the ban in court.
“I know Sally Yates,” Klobuchar said. “I’ve worked with her on human trafficinking issues. She’s someone that actually prosecuted to Olympic park bomber. She’s someone that was well respected in Georgia, went to school down there, worked at a law firm down there, was the U.S. attorney in an area that’s not exactly a liberal bastion. And she herself is not an activist.”
However, Klobuchar said she would defer to the courts on whether the ban was constitutional, while still saying there “are some constitutional issues” with the order, as evidenced by rulings halting some parts of the ban.
Klobuchar went on to say that Mr. Trump’s pick to fill a vacant seat on the Supreme Court, who the White House is expected to announce Tuesday night, will be subjected to a “very thorough investigation.”
“We don’t know who he’s going to nominate for this job but I can tell you that, as a member of the Judiciary Committee, that we will be thoroughly vetting this person – that at a hearing there’s going to be numerous questions about their views on issues and precedent and on respect for precedent,” she said.