Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is tripling down in his war to block President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Eric Holder as Attorney General, U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch, launching a new petition on Friday calling for 10,000 signatures to block the vote.
“Let’s get 10,000 signatures!” Paul wrote on his Facebook page, announcing the petition.
This is urgent and I need your help right away. President Obama’s handpicked AG nominee, Loretta Lynch, could face a confirmation vote as soon as next week. She believes that the President can write legislation from the Oval Office. In fact, Lynch called Obama’s Executive Amnesty reasonable and refused to rule out executive authority to kill Americans on U.S. soil. And that’s not all, as U.S. Attorney Lynch championed “asset forfeiture,” a way for the government to take your stuff without due process, to the tune of 100s of millions. You and I must stop Loretta Lynch, she is too radical to become Attorney General.
The link on his Facebook page takes users to a petition and resolution against Lynch on his campaign website RAND Pac.
The “Stop Loretta Lynch” petition to Americans’s senators hits Lynch because she “agrees with President Obama’s view of unlimited executive powers,” because she’s “a lifelong cheerleader for using civil asset forfeiture to snatch up MILLIONS of dollars from people not convicted of a crime,” because she “openly justifies President Obama’s unconstitutional executive amnesty,” and because she “shares the same disdain for the Constitution and Bill of Rights as President Obama.”
It urges U.S. Senators to oppose her nomination next week, if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell follows through with his plans to bring her up for a vote—even though he clearly does not have to if he doesn’t want her to have a chance of succeeding.
Paul’s Facebook page also includes an interview he conducted on Fox News with host Eric Bolling about how bad Lynch really is on civil forfeiture—which Lynch supports.
“[Civil forfeiture is where] basically the government can take money from you without ever convicting you, without ever even charging you,” Paul said.
In fact, the most famous U.S. Attorney for doing this is Loretta Lynch. She confiscated $110 million worth of people’s stuff, never tried them, never even took them to court, just kept their money. And it turns justice on its head because you’re presumed to be guilty until you prove that you’re innocent. So I’m very opposed to this, I’ve met with the president about this and we’re putting forward legislation that says they shouldn’t be allowed to take your stuff without a conviction.
Paul has been publicly opposed to Lynch’s nomination for weeks, coming out against her on Greta Van Susteren’s program on Fox News even before the Senate Judiciary Committee approved her to go to the full senate. Hours before that interview, as his staff briefed him for it in his Capitol Hill office, Breitbart News was present and watched it—and Paul said: “Oh, she’s going down.”
Paul also, before the election, promised not to support any nominee to replace Holder as attorney general who doesn’t explicitly oppose Obama’s executive amnesty and other executive overreaches—a promise he’s now following through on.
“I think it’s even bigger and broader than that,” Paul said in an exclusive interview in South Carolina with Breitbart News in September 2014, when asked if he’d back a plan put forward by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to block the Holder replacement nominee if they support executive amnesty.
I think the attorney general should, whoever the nominee is, acknowledge that they will operate independent of politics, independent of the president and under the direction of the Constitution. The Constitution really doesn’t allow the president to legislate. It’s a host of issues—I wouldn’t limit it to just immigration. Whether it’s immigration, healthcare or war, those are congressional powers. But really with the whole separation of powers, he’s had a whole host of executive orders that appear to be legislating and appear to be illegal. So yeah I think those are important questions to ask the next attorney general. The question I think is whether it comes up in lame duck session where they have the majority, or whether it comes up in January when hopefully the Republicans have the majority.
After Paul’s comments, his Kentucky colleague then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell promised voters he would hold the Holder replacement to the same standards.
“As attorney general, Eric Holder too often put political and ideological commitments ahead of the rule of law,” McConnell said. “That’s not something the American people expect in the nation’s highest law-enforcement official, and it’s something Mr. Holder’s replacement should commit to avoiding at all costs as a condition of his or her confirmation — whether it relates to the President’s acting unilaterally on immigration or anything else.”
After McConnell won re-election and the new GOP majority in the Senate made him the Senate Majority Leader, however, he has not followed through on his promise like Paul has. McConnell’s aides have repeatedly refused to answer whether McConnell will personally vote against Lynch—who testified that she supports Obama’s executive amnesty—as he promised, and they won’t explain why McConnell is bringing her to the U.S. Senate floor when he clearly does not need to do so.
At this point, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)—the other two major potential conservative presidential candidates for 2016—have also, alongside Paul, come out swinging against Lynch’s nomination. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, however, has said nothing.
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