Wall Street Journal
By Devlin Barrett
March 24, 2015
The
White House pick to take the No. 2 spot at the Justice Department
fielded mostly friendly questions at her confirmation hearing Tuesday,
while the political standoff
over the next attorney general looks to stretch into at least next
month.
Sally
Yates has been serving for weeks as the acting deputy attorney general
while she awaits Senate confirmation. She offered no surprises in her
answers Tuesday to the
Senate Judiciary Committee, which pressed her on issues ranging from
immigration to presidential power and terrorism.
Ms.
Yates, who had served as the U.S. attorney in Atlanta, said it is her
duty to stand by the administration’s legal position on immigration.
The
Justice Department is currently appealing a federal judge’s decision to
temporarily block the Department of Homeland Security from implementing
the Obama administration’s
immigration plan, which would allow about four million people currently
in the country illegally to apply for deferred deportation and work authorizations.
Republicans
have sharply criticized the president’s move as an overreach of his
authority and a failure to reform the U.S. immigration system.
Ms.
Yates told lawmakers the agency will abide by the court ruling “unless
and until a higher court reaches a different decision,” and said
presidential action on immigration
was an issue “on which reasonable people can disagree.”
The
questioning of Ms. Yates came as Republicans and Democrats remained at
odds over bringing to a floor vote Loretta Lynch’s confirmation to be
attorney general.
The
two sides are sparring over abortion language in a bill about human
trafficking, and it appears the earliest Ms. Lynch’s nomination could
come to a Senate vote will
be mid-April. Ms. Lynch, whose confirmation hearing was held in
January, is currently the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn.
Also
Tuesday, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R., W.Va.), who had been undecided
on Ms. Lynch, announced she wouldn’t vote to confirm her. Mrs. Capito’s
vote wasn’t expected
to be decisive, as there are still enough likely Republican yes votes
to confirm her.
Senators
didn’t seek to draw Ms. Yates into the abortion debate, but she did say
the fight against human trafficking—which is a term government
officials increasingly
use to describe pimping—is a department priority.
On
terrorism, Ms. Yates said it was critical to thwart the radicalization
of followers of the militant group Islamic State, because it has shown
an alarming degree of
sophistication in recruiting Americans and others to its cause.
“It
can’t just be a law-enforcement response,” she said. “This is crime
prevention, and it is the most essential crime prevention that we can be
doing.”
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