Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) will end the year with a small but symbolic victory on blue slips as Democrats sign off on a handful of President Donald Trump’s less controversial nominees for U.S. attorney.
Senate Democrats in Michigan, New Hampshire, and Maine have returned blue slips for three prosecutor nominees currently making their way through the upper chamber. Two of them, Jerome Gorgon and Erin Creegan, will be confirmed as part of a large package of nominees next week. The third, Andrew Benson, is expected to advance through the Judiciary Committee on Thursday, teeing up a floor vote for early next year.
Their confirmation will help Grassley, the Judiciary Committee chairman, demonstrate that bipartisanship still exists even as other Trump nominees remain political lightning rods. The president’s U.S. attorneys, in particular, are vulnerable to partisan gridlock, as the blue slip tradition gives home state senators veto power over nominees, something Democrats have used to block his choices in New York, New Jersey, and other Democratic-run states.
Trump, fuming over that veto power, has attempted to circumvent Senate confirmation altogether and appoint the nominees unilaterally, only to suffer setbacks in court. He’s also hit a wall of resistance in the Senate, where Grassley and other Republicans on his committee refuse to scrap the blue slip courtesy, viewing it as helpful when their party is in the minority.
Trump was caught on a hot mic venting over blue slips earlier this week, but has attacked Grassley publicly over it.
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“I want Trump to be successful, and the only way he can be successful is if we approve his nominees,” Grassley told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “If we did away with the blue slip, you got all the Democrats and at least two Republicans who wouldn’t vote for anybody to get out of Judiciary, and he’d never get any of his people approved anyway.”
“I want to produce for the president, and the only way you can produce for the president is to have at least 12 votes in the committee,” Grassley added.
In total, Grassley has found bipartisan cooperation from Democratic senators in six states, with the Senate confirming two other U.S. attorneys with their approval in October. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) returned a blue slip for David Metcalf in Pennsylvania, while Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Tina Smith (D-MN) did the same for Daniel Rosen, the U.S. attorney for the district of Minnesota.
Those nominees were not especially controversial, advancing out of the Judiciary Committee in large bipartisan votes, but they were the first of Trump’s U.S. attorneys to be confirmed in blue states.
“Putting aside political differences, he is respected across the board in Minnesota, and so I thought he would be a good U.S. attorney,” Smith said of Rosen, adding that she’s known him for years.
In the current batch of blue state nominees, Creegan advanced in an 18-4 committee vote, and Gorgon advanced 20-2.
“He was an unambiguously qualified candidate with a great record and a great reputation,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) said of Gorgon, the Michigan U.S. attorney nominee who will get a vote next week, adding that she consulted with the White House on his nomination.
“There’s a process,” Slotkin added. “And so, of course, we engage back and forth very productively.”
Since they will be bundled into a package of 97 total nominees, Democrats are likely to oppose them in the floor vote next week, but the note of bipartisanship stands in stark contrast to the drama unfolding over nominees that Democrats have blocked.
Courts have ruled that four of Trump’s U.S. attorneys, named on an acting or interim basis, were serving unlawfully, and while not all were nominated in the Senate, Democrats have either promised to withhold a blue slip or expressed opposition to them.
Those disqualified nominees have been serving in California, Nevada, and Virginia, while a fourth, Alina Habba, his prosecutor for New Jersey, stepped down Monday after the administration lost a bid to appeal the ruling in her case.
Overall, the Senate will have confirmed 31 of Trump’s U.S. attorneys by the end of next week, when lawmakers depart for the Christmas recess, with the overwhelming majority in states where both senators are Republicans.
Another outlier is Jeanine Pirro, the Fox News host-turned-U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Despite being a Democratic stronghold, the district has no voting power in Congress and therefore no senators who could withhold a blue slip.
The Senate confirmed Pirro in an August floor vote, with all Democratic senators voting against her.
Democratic senators also returned blue slips for Todd Gilbert and Erik Siebert, both of whom were tapped for prosecutor posts in Virginia, but the nominees resigned before the confirmation process was completed, reportedly under pressure from the White House.
Seibert had been unwilling to pursue an indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of Trump’s political enemies. The New York Times cited a similar lack of cooperation on the part of Gilbert.
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Trump claimed that he soured on Siebert because Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Mark Warner (D-VA) supported his nomination and had previously vented that blue slips force him to choose liberals or “weak” Republicans.
“When I saw that he got approved by those two men, I said, ‘Pull it,’ because he can’t be any good,” Trump told reporters in September. “When I learned that they voted for him, I said, ‘I don’t really want him.’”
Ramsey Touchberry contributed to this report.