White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest lashed out at congressional Republicans on Thursday for delaying a confirmation vote for Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch, suggesting Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Chuck Grassley “has been in Washington too long.”
Earnest said Lynch has now waited now more than twice as long as the previous 7 attorneys general nominees combined to get a vote in the Senate. He called the situation “unconscionable” and “Exhibit A in why it is very challenging to work with congressional Republicans.”
And he singled out Grassley for saying today that Democrats shared responsibility for the delay because they didn’t bring her up for nomination last fall when they controlled the Senate.
“They decided not to bring her up because they had several other pieces of legislation,” Grassley said on Bloomberg.
But Earnest noted that Grassley last September had suggested it would be better for Obama to wait to nominate someone until the Republican-led Congress could take up the nomination in January.
Earnest called Grassley’s remarks an “astounding display of duplicity.”
And he added, “The sad part, I think, is that Sen. Grassley, particularly in his home state of Iowa, has cultivated a reputation as somebody who is true to his word," Earnest said. "The only conclusion I can draw from this astounding exchange is that it's possible Sen. Grassley has been in Washington too long."
A spokeswoman for Grassley accused the White House of rewriting history.
“If you believe the White House and Senate Democrats had Republicans’ best interests in mind when they delayed consideration of the Lynch nomination last fall, you hadn’t watched how Harry Reid ran the Senate,” said Beth Levine. “It was abundantly clear then – just as it is now – that Senate Democrats’ priorities didn’t include the Lynch nomination.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said he won’t let Lynch get a confirmation vote until an anti-trafficking bill passes. But the proposed bill to aid human trafficking victims is tied up in abortion politics, with Democrats objecting to an anti-abortion provision in the measure.
The Senate bill would create a $30 million fund for victims financed by fines on traffickers. Republicans added a stipulation that none of the money could be used for abortion except in cases of rape or incest. The so-called Hyde Amendment, named for the late Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., dates back to 1976 and is a part of annual funding bills.
“Instead of lodging personal attacks against a highly respected senator, the White House would be better off spending time getting their left-wing lobby to drop their opposition to legislative language that has been the law of the land for more than 35 years,” Levine said.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid insisted Thursday he will force a vote on Lynch.
“We’ve put up with this far too long and we’re going to need to have a vote on her very soon that’s created by Mitch McConnell or I’ll create one,” Reid said in an interview that will air on tonight’s The Rachel Maddow Show. “I can still do that. I know parliamentary procedure around here and we’re going to put up with this for a little while longer but not much.”
Asked whether Earnest’s criticism of Grassley was “helpful” to the process of getting Lynch nominated, Earnest didn’t back down.
“I'll just observe that being nice has gotten us a 160- day delay,” he said. “So, maybe after they look up ‘duplicitous’ in the dictionary, we'll get a different result.”