What possible issue do Ben Cline, Morgan Griffith and John McGuire have with Todd Gilbert being the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia?
Fair question, in light of the news making the rounds that the three MAGA congressmen have created their own ad hoc panel to come up with a suggested nominee for the federal prosecutorial post.
“There is precedent in Virginia for U.S. House members to express their preferences to a president of their party. Accordingly, we believe creating a House panel afforded us the opportunity to give our insights into the opening and candidates for the White House to consider,” the three said in a joint statement last week.
This development came to light several weeks after U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, both D-Va., formally recommended Gilbert, the MAGA Republican former Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, and Robert Tracci, the former commonwealth’s attorney in Albemarle County, for the job.
ICYMI
Cardinal News reported that the Cline-Griffith-McGuire panel interviewed four candidates, including Gilbert and Tracci, along with Maggie Cleary, the deputy Commonwealth’s attorney in Culpeper County, and Justin Griffith, the Commonwealth’s attorney in Pulaski County.
The congressmen haven’t spilled the beans on who they have recommended to the Trump administration.
The way the process works: the president nominates candidates for open U.S. Attorney positions, and the Senate then votes to confirm.
This is why you see senators do the heavy lifting on the vetting of potential candidates.
Personally, I don’t see the issue with House members doing their own thing, particularly given that Kaine and Warner are Democrats, and Trump is a wannabe MAGA king, which does complicate things.
That said, it’s not like the senators recommended a Democrat or a Never Trumper.
Todd “Abortion is a Lifestyle Convenience” Gilbert has repeatedly blocked an effort to remove the outdated ban on gay marriage from the Virginia Constitution, consistently opposed Obamacare and Medicaid expansion at the state level in Virginia, and routinely denigrates those who want justice for Palestinians caught between militants in Hamas and militants in the Israeli military as advocating for the “rape, murder and kidnapping of innocent people.”
Tracci, for his part, served a single term as the Commonwealth’s attorney in Albemarle County before being soundly defeated in his re-election bid in 2019, who then got himself another paid government job with Rusty McGuire, the Commonwealth’s attorney in Louisa County and brother of John McGuire, before moving on up to a job with the Office of Attorney General under MAGA Republican Jason Miyares.
Nobody asks me about these things, but Kaine and Warner should have gone with a Democrat or Never Trumper, just as an act of resistance, given how the Trump administration is systematically trampling on the rule of law.
Instead, our Democrats are acting like the breach of congressional protocol is the real issue here.
“The Senate gives advice and consent to presidential nominees, and so that doesn’t mean they can’t recommend people to the White House, but Sen. Warner and I have already had a bipartisan interview panel of former U.S. Attorneys, both Democratic and Republican administrations. We made two really good recommendations to the White House. I think either of those would be very solid,” Kaine told reporters on a conference call last week.
That’s putting on a bit thick, don’t you think?
You haven’t heard from Warner on this yet.
“We know President Trump won. He ought to get his right to pick people,” Warner told reporters on a separate conference call last week. “We went through a thorough bipartisan review process recommended somebody from both the Eastern District and the Western District. Have already heard back from the White House. They thought our process was very good. We realized we had to recommend people that had been, you know, supporters of Mr. Trump. So, there’s no political bias here.
“Yeah, I kind of kind of scratch my head about it,” Warner continued. “I hope at the end of the day, the White House is going to rely upon the same process that every White House, including the first Trump administration, where the sitting senators, review candidates, make recommendations. White House then gets to choose their own person, of course, but if they’re somehow trying to go around the historic process where senators make those recommendations, it would be a huge step backwards.”
The huge step backwards is the compliance in advance that we’ve been seeing from Kaine and Warner, but that’s another issue for another day.
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Chris Graham
