During his brief tenure in the Senate, Vice President JD Vance blocked Biden administration nominees for U.S. attorney, in a break with past practice.
Now, a senior Democrat is citing that as a precedent for insisting on the same standard for President Trump’s federal prosecutor nominees, potentially jeopardizing their confirmation.
“There shouldn’t be one set of rules for Republicans and another for the Democrats,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, who plans to adhere to what he is calling “the Vance precedent” for Trump prosecutors unless Republicans offer some concessions.
“You expect me to just look the other way now?” he asked of Republicans at a Judiciary Committee hearing this week.
U.S. attorney nominees traditionally sped through the Senate on an expedited basis once they cleared an F.B.I. background check and scrutiny by the Judiciary Committee. The panel does not conduct formal hearings on them, as it does on judges up for lifetime appointments. Mr. Durbin noted that Democrats had followed that practice in agreeing to confirm scores of prosecutors in Mr. Trump’s first term.
But beginning in June 2023, Mr. Vance, then a first-term Republican senator, said he would oppose moving ahead with all Justice Department nominees, excluding federal marshals, to protest what he contended was the politicization of the department and its pursuit of Mr. Trump in the courts. He said his goal was to “grind this department to a halt.”
Mr. Durbin tried repeatedly on the floor to get Mr. Vance to relent and allow U.S. attorney picks to proceed to confirmation votes. But Mr. Vance continued to resist.
“I object to this, because we are living in a banana republic where the president is using his Department of Justice to go after his chief political rival, the person he will appear on the ballot with in about a year,” Mr. Vance said in November 2023 as Mr. Durbin sought confirmation of U.S. attorneys for posts in Illinois and Ohio.
After Mr. Vance headed for the campaign trail as Mr. Trump’s running mate, other Republican senators took up his cause and lodged the objections for him. A Senate majority could have overruled Mr. Vance’s “hold,” but it would have taken as many as three days of procedural votes.
The vice president’s office declined a request to respond to Mr. Durbin’s contention that Mr. Vance’s actions as a senator had set a precedent for Democrats to stand in the way of Trump administration nominees for U.S. attorney.
But Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who leads the Judiciary Committee, disputed the notion, saying the Senate “shouldn’t take a single senator’s actions as setting Senate-wide precedent.”
“This will result in an inevitable and destructive race to the bottom,” Mr. Grassley added. He noted that forcing formal votes on all 93 top federal prosecutors would eat up more than 230 hours of scarce Senate floor time.
Nominations for U.S. attorney, normally not a focus of partisan tension, have become a flashpoint in the early months of the Trump administration.
Democrats have already lodged objections to some Trump prosecutorial picks under a committee tradition that gives them veto power by withholding a “blue slip” providing consent to move forward. Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and minority leader, earlier this year said he would not provide blue slips on Trump prosecutorial nominees in his state.
In addition, Mr. Trump’s nomination of Ed Martin to be the U.S. attorney in Washington was withdrawn after a bipartisan group of lawmakers objected to his support of people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.
Placing a “hold” on a nominee, as Mr. Durbin has done on a U.S. attorney candidate from Florida, is another way to slow the process. In the past, holds were generally used in cases when senators had specific objections to a nominee. But Mr. Vance and other Republicans began placing blanket holds on whole categories of executive branch picks in protest of Biden administration actions.
Democrats began firing back this year. Mr. Schumer said he would deny quick approval of all Justice Department nominees until Attorney General Pam Bondi provided more information about her decision to clear the way for Mr. Trump to accept a luxury jet from Qatar to serve as Air Force One. On Wednesday, he blocked Mr. Grassley from receiving a vote on an assistant attorney general nominee.
Mr. Grassley lamented the escalation of such blanket obstructions.
“Holds should be used selectively,” Mr. Grassley said. “Blanket holds intended to wholly obstruct the confirmation process are misguided and threaten to undermine the Senate’s advice and consent role.”
Senators Grassley and Durbin, who have a history of working together, said they hoped to reach a resolution that would allow confirmation of U.S. attorneys. Mr. Durbin did not disclose what concessions he was seeking from Republicans to unblock the process.
“We have got to find a way out of this that is fair and bipartisan that we are going to stick with for both political parties,” Mr. Durbin said. “You just can’t change the rules overnight.”
“We still have to resolve the mess left behind by Vice President Vance,” he added.
Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The Times, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital.
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