The associate attorney general position is the number three spot in the hierarchy at the Department of Justice. There has not been a Senate-confirmed person in that job since February 2018, when Rachel Brand left the administration for a much better-paying job at Walmart. Somewhat surprisingly based on his gender and racial attitudes, President Trump appointed an Asian-American woman to fill the post. Jesse Liu has been the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia since September 2017. She went to Harvard and got her law degree from Yale. During the administration of George W. Bush, she served in the DOJ as deputy chief of staff in the National Security Division, counsel to the deputy attorney general, and deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division. When Samuel Alito was nominated to the Supreme Court, she joined dozens of other Yale Law graduates in signing a letter of support for his confirmation.
Nonetheless, Trump has just withdrawn her nomination. Some are saying it is because a group of Republican senators don’t trust her to be anti-choice, and the position of associate attorney general has responsibility for health care-related issues among many other things. It’s not clear why these senators don’t trust her, but it’s probably not the reason her nomination was spiked.
National Public Radio is reporting that Senator Mike Lee of Utah had some sort of shouting match with Attorney General William Barr over Ms. Liu’s nomination. Lee chairs the antitrust subcommittee in the Senate, and Samuel Alito’s son Philip serves on the staff. Apparently, Philip has a problem with Ms. Liu.
Four lawyers familiar with the matter said the stumbling block for Liu was a broader concern about her conservatism — specifically, her stance on women’s reproductive rights. Interest groups had begun drafting letters to senators about their fears that Liu would not support restrictions on abortion. Another key factor: Earlier in her career, Liu had an affiliation with the National Association of Women Lawyers, which sent a letter opposing the nomination of Justice Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.
It looks like the Alito family remembers very well which organizations did not support Samuel’s nomination the Supreme Court. So, once they found out that Liu once had “an affiliation” with one of those organizations, it was an immediate World War Three to deny her the position. They probably didn’t bother to look deeper and discover that Liu had personally endorsed Alito for the Court.
This is a petty and stupid reason for denying her the position. Also, it shouldn’t be legal to deny a woman a job because she doesn’t support restricting her own constitutional rights.
In any case, it doesn’t look like the third in command is going to be a very well-qualified Asian-American woman. They’ll probably find someone with a law degree from Pat Robertson University instead.
Whether it’s revenge or just once again cutting their collective noses off to spite themselves nothing defines the Rep leadership better than the word ‘shallow’. Be careful what you wish for boys…
Let’s pause for a moment. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s son is on the staff of the Senate Subcommittee which considers antitrust law? And Senator Mark Lee, a deranged extremist in opposition to regulations of financial transactions, thinks quite highly of the Alito boy??
Lovely!
And, we’re being utterly strangled by our incestuous and nepotistic branches of government.
This would be a good time to recall that the son of former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy was a tip-top executive with Deutsche Bank when they were the only lender helping Donald Trump and the Russian mob conduct their money-laundering schemes.
Small fucking world.
Specifically, he was in charge of the Real Estate lending division that loaned the Trump Organization all that money. Supposedly, in July, last year, Trump warned Justice Kennedy that he better step down or he would publicize the cozy relationship between his son and the Trump Organization. Trump was concerned that the Dems might take back the Senate in the mid-terms and wanted to get Boofer Bart on the Court before then. Supposedly, that’s why, out of the blue and for no apparent reason, Kennedy stepped down. Don’t know if this story is true but it’s out there and it seems like the kind of thuggish thing Trump would do.
count on the gop to wank harder each and every day for the industry seal of approval:
I was concerned he was bumping her upwards so that he could easily appoint someone malleable to head up the DC attorney’s office. Of course, he could have just fired her.
Yes, it goes without saying in a Repub admin that only the most extremist “conservatives” are permitted to sit in most DOJ policy positions. Barr himself (a Bush creature) would not have qualified if Der Trumper and Gravedigger McConnell hadn’t been desperately in need of a proven white-washer of executive misdeeds.
On the other hand, US Attorney Liu looks like a Bushco partisan who apparently thought that a hardcore conservative activist in judicial robes like Sam Alito was a wonderful choice the High Court, so if she actually was/is concerned about women’s reproductive rights, she has a strange way of showing it. We may hear more from her, as I assume she’ll be responsible for deciding whether to enforce any House subpoenas to the lawbreaking Trump regime, assuming they ever issue any.
Anyway, this is a predictable DC skirmish among wingnuts that very few people will ever hear about, except perhaps some Fundamentalist nut-jobs on anti-abort email chains. Who knows what the ordinary boob would think if it ever crossed their consciousness?
As for the poisoned and non-functioning brain of “conservative” religious extremist Lee, his recent idiotic senate floor presentation about the terrible evils of the Green New Deal and the miraculous wonders of more American babies seems a greater performance for Wanker of the Day than this….of course, a goof like him is in the running every day of the year!
I find it ‘shocking’, in fact quite ‘shocking’ that the Republican party is made up of an elite group of wealthy assholes hellbent on denying the rest of us (us defined as anyone not in the strict hierarchy) any sort of say in the process.
Something in the past forty years might have alerted the attentive that the Republicans do not give a f*** what anyone else thinks.
Of all the conservative justices on the SCOTUS, Alito is, by far, the nastiest in terms of both personality and ideology.
Happy April Fools Day! When I read the title, I expected it would be about Mike Lee’s presentation against the Green New Deal. Fortunately, Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert mocked it for you.