14 hours ago
5
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
The top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee said Vice President JD Vance had set a precedent for derailing U.S. attorney candidates during his time in the Senate.
June 6, 2025, 4:45 p.m. ET
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.”
