Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) abruptly cut off Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) from finishing his remarks on nominee Vanita Gupta to immediately vote her through Committee.
During the vote, Cotton said Durbin broke Committee rules. “Senator Durbin forced a sham roll call vote—both violating the rules and making it clear the Democrats know Gupta’s nomination is on life support,” Cotton later tweeted. “[This] is the Senate equivalent of pulling a fire alarm to escape a test in high school.”
“Why?” Cotton expounded. “Because Vanita Gupta has said that every single American is racist. She has refused to answer basic questions about her record. She has made personal attacks on the character and integrity of senators & judges that she still refuses to apologize for. She is unfit for office.”
Vanita Gupta has faced criticism from 11 Republican senators who demanded a second confirmation hearing for the nominee due to “her misleading statements, and for her refusal to respond to our written questions.”
Breitbart News reported in March that Gupta has “long praised proposals to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour while also owning stock in her family’s company which pays its Mexican labor force $1.30 an hour.” Additionally, Gupta owns between $11 million and $55 million of stock in her father’s enterprise that sold acetic anhydride to Mexican cartels, a chemical used to make “high-grade ‘china white’ heroin and methamphetamine.”