We Need Jeanine Pirro To Explain 'Why She Was Regarded As Crazy': Richard Blumenthal

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At today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) voiced opposition to Jeanine Pirro, nominee to be U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C.

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00:00Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Let me just build on what my colleague, Senator Schiff, has said so well.

00:08What ought to concern us on this committee...

00:10What should concern us on this committee, and we have a very proud tradition on the

00:26Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate of responsibly scrutinizing nominees for

00:32United States attorney positions and judgeships is what we don't know about these nominees

00:41and what we haven't had the opportunity to ask, such as the questions for the record

00:49that Jeanine Pirro has refused to answer. We should be having a hearing with her

00:55asking her why she was regarded as crazy, asking her why she advocated that the prosecutors

01:07of the January 6th cases be investigated. And I just want to say a word about the men and women

01:17who come today every day in the United States Department of Justice. You know, I was the United

01:23States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, as a number of us have been prosecutors in the

01:30federal system. I was also a state attorney general. They come to work every day seeking

01:38justice. They have an ethos and tradition for the person who is going to be head of the largest United

01:50States Attorney's Attorney's Office in the nation and who has responsibility for prosecuting federal

01:56crimes that affect the whole nation to say that the ones to be investigated and prosecuted are

02:07the assistant U.S. attorneys who brought criminal charges against the January 6th rioters,

02:17I think betrays the entire ethos and norms of the Department of Justice. It undermines literally

02:27justice in the United States. She ought to be asked what she meant when she was asked on a radio show

02:35by a guest who said January 6th prosecutors should be, quote, criminally investigated. And she said,

02:45quote, I absolutely agree with that. She's failed to disavow that position. She's failed to answer

02:52questions that we've posed in written requests for information to her about remarks that she's made

03:02in the past. We need to do our job here, Mr. Chairman. We have a responsibility to scrutinize

03:10those kinds of responses and to have her testify. And likewise, with Mr. Beauvais,

03:17a lot more unanswered questions. I submitted yesterday a letter to the Attorney General,

03:26Pam Bondi, asking for results of the investigation done of a case supervised by Mr. Beauvais, finding

03:36very serious wrongdoing on the part of some of his subordinates and perhaps holding him responsible for

03:43them. The Office of Professional Responsibility concluded an investigation. We've had no access

03:49to it. He ought to be asked about it. Likewise, the whistleblower who came forward and others who have

03:55indicated they have information ought to be questioned by us in public under oath. We have a job to do here.

04:04We should do our job. We should scrutinize these nominees with the kind of fairness

04:17but also intensity that is part of our mandate because the judgeships are lifetime and the prosecutors

04:28are enormously powerful. I always felt that the most important decisions I made as a prosecutor were

04:35whether to charge someone because charges can follow people throughout their lives, impact

04:42them financially and reputationally, and she is going to command an office of hundreds of attorneys who will

04:50be bringing charges and perhaps devastatingly affect the lives of individuals as well as clearly a

04:59responsibility to uphold the public interest in enforcing the law. I think we ought to be delving into

05:08their backgrounds by continuing our fact-finding in this committee rather than going forward with her

05:14today. Senator Volcker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think if I have my

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