Senate Judiciary chairman: No deputy AG vote until we get an FBI briefing on Russia
By Karoun Demirjian March 14 at 7:19 PM
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley said Tuesday he will hold up the deputy attorney general’s confirmation vote as collateral until FBI Director James B. Comey briefs his panel about investigations into alleged ties between the Trump administration and Russian officials.
“I’m not going to schedule a hearing on the deputy attorney general until we get a briefing from Comey,” Grassley (R-Iowa) said Tuesday, even though, as he noted, “the Justice Department would like to get their deputy out of committee just as soon as they can.”
Deputy attorney general nominee Rod J. Rosenstein had his confirmation hearing before the committee last week and is expected to earn enough votes to be confirmed on the Senate floor. But before his nomination can go to the full Senate for confirmation, the Judiciary Committee must schedule a meeting to approve his nomination. The schedule is at Grassley’s discretion.
Grassley said he informed the Justice Department’s legislative affairs office last Thursday that he would not schedule the business meeting necessary to move Rosenstein’s nomination out of committee until the department scheduled Comey for a briefing with committee members.
Grassley added that he had no preference for whether the briefing would be private or public, saying he would be satisfied with “whatever the law allows.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/03/14/senate-judiciary-chairman-no-deputy-ag-vote-until-we-get-an-fbi-briefing-on-russia/?utm_term=.6b86fdfec538&wpisrc=nl_politics&wpmm=1
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