Remembering Walter Frederick Mondale

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, as we await a very important moment for justice in my State today. Our work goes on.

I am here today, first of all, to acknowledge the loss of my mentor, Vice President Walter Mondale. He caught the Nation's attention fighting for justice. So, it is such a moment. He worked on the forefront of the right to counsel in the landmark case Gideon v. Wainwright.

He followed in the footsteps of Hubert Humphrey to arrive in the Senate. He did great things passing civil rights legislation.

As Vice President, he defined the office of the modern-day Vice President.

He was ``Fritz'' to us. He was our attorney general, our Senator, and our Vice President, and I know he is up there right now rooting for justice.

I am going to speak more about Walter Mondale next week. Senator Smith, Senator Grassley, and I have a resolution honoring him for his time in the Senate and for his time as Vice President, which we will be presenting next week. Nominations of Vanita Gupta and Lisa O. Monaco

Mr. President, now, in the name of justice and the idea that justice must keep rolling along, I want to talk a little bit about some of the people we need in place as we look to the future, as we look to the future of police reform and the work that you have done as the lead on this bill, Mr. President, and the work we have to do.

To do that, we need a functioning Justice Department. We have an Attorney General who is excellent in Merrick Garland. We congratulate Lisa Monaco, who is expected to be confirmed later today with a strong bipartisan vote.

But we need more. We need the presence of true leaders in the Justice Department. We need to see Kristen Clarke and Vanita Gupta confirmed.

Walter Mondale was someone who always raised the bar. He was someone who was ahead of his time. When he introduced housing legislation and childcare legislation, a lot of people said: Oh, why are you doing that right now?

I think that is a little bit like the experience of these two women, ahead of their time, doing the right thing, speaking of raising the bar.

We know that when many of the women of the Senate come to the floor, something important is going on. And given the challenges our States face today, the stakes are high.

So today we make the case for Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke, and we address the unfair and unsubstantiated attacks we have heard from the other side of the aisle against these eminently qualified women. I have worked closely with Ms. Gupta and Ms. Clarke for many years, and I am confident they will lead the Department of Justice with honor and integrity.

Their nominations also represent the historic opportunity to make progress toward the goal of ensuring that the government looks more like the people it represents, especially at the Department of Justice. When we confirm Ms. Gupta, she will be the first civil rights lawyer and the first woman of color to serve as the Associate Attorney General. And when we confirm Ms. Clarke, she will be the first Senate- confirmed leader of the Civil Rights Division to be a woman of color.

They will bring years of experience to bear to take on the challenges we have right now, like hate crimes, on which we are taking action this week in the Senate; like voting rights, on which we just had a hearing today in the Judiciary Committee, and in just a few weeks we will be marking up the For the People Act in the Rules Committee, which I chair.

As my State and my country are reeling after the killing of Daunte Wright, and as we await the verdict in the murder of George Floyd, we need Ms. Gupta and Ms. Clarke at the Department of Justice to take on systemic police and criminal justice reform.

They are also the leaders that Attorney General Garland wants at the Department, which I asked him about at his nomination hearing. He said Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke ``have skills that I do not have; they have experiences that I do not have.'' And he said: ``No human being can have all of the skills necessary to run the Justice Department and I need this leadership team if I'm going to be successful.''

Attorney General Garland, who was confirmed by a bipartisan vote of 76 to 23, needs his team to be successful. That is something all of us should want.

After what we saw during the previous administration, it is essential that the leaders of the Justice Department are committed to its independence in order to restore trust in our justice system. This is a priority for the Attorney General, and it is a priority for Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke.

Vanita Gupta has demonstrated her commitment to the pursuit of justice for her entire career. As an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, she worked on the frontlines fighting in court to protect the civil rights of some of the most vulnerable people.

Later, at the American Civil Liberties Union, she brought cases on behalf of immigrant children and worked to end mass incarceration while keeping communities safe.

While serving as our country's chief civil rights prosecutor at the Department of Justice during the Obama administration, Ms. Gupta led critical work on criminal justice reform, prosecuting hate crimes and human trafficking, defending the right to vote, and protecting the rights of the LGBTQ community and those with disabilities.

As president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the Nation's oldest, largest, and most diverse civil and human rights coalition, Ms. Gupta has a record of fighting for all Americans with dedication and a willingness to work across ideological lines to achieve results.

Ms. Gupta's depth of experience at the Department of Justice and her years as a civil rights attorney make her eminently qualified to serve as Associate Attorney General.

And I have seen--as I know you have, Mr. President--her work firsthand. I was one of the cosponsors of the FIRST STEP Act, which made much needed reforms, a bill that you spent so much leadership on. And Ms. Gupta worked with us, as she brought a broad range of organizations and experts in support of the bill, including both law enforcement and civil liberties groups.

Grover Norquist, a Republican and president of Americans for Tax Reform, who supported the FIRST STEP Act, described Ms. Gupta as ``an honest broker; someone with an ability not only to understand, but also appreciate, different perspectives. She was someone who sought consensus.''

As I look at what my State has been through for the last year and as we await this verdict at this moment, that is exactly the kind of person we need at the Department right now. And, if you have any lingering questions, I say to my colleagues, just take a look at the number of law enforcement groups that have come out in support of he nomination. Just look at them. She is the right person for the job at the right time.

Then there is Kristen Clarke, nominated to be Assistant Attorney General to lead the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice. Ms. Clarke has spent her entire 20-year career fighting for civil rights and equal justice under the law.

Early in her career, she worked as an attorney in the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, for the Bush Administration. She investigated and prosecuted hate crimes and human trafficking. She also worked in the Division's voting section.

Since 2016, she has been the president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the country's largest and most important civil rights organizations, dedicated to the pursuit of equal justice for all. It is important to note the history of the Lawyers' Committee, which was created at the request of President John F. Kennedy in the summer of 1963, perhaps the defining year of the civil rights movement. This is an organization of attorneys founded to organize their peers to use their training to advance civil rights for all Americans. Isn't that just who we want leading the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice?

I have worked with Ms. Clarke for many years on election issues. She testified before the Rules Committee and impressed everyone on both sides of the aisle.

At that time, she said that following the direction of many, she is going to work to ensure ``that the Civil Rights Division . . . is using the tools in its arsenal''--and she said that now as she has been nominated for this position--``the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the Uniformed and Overseas Absentee Citizens Voting Act--to ensure that eligible Americans have access to the ballot in our country.''

She also mentioned that she was here in the Senate Chamber in 2006, when this body passed the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act--on what vote?--98 to 0. That is why she has support from Republicans and Democrats who work on these issues.

Trevor Potter, who previously chaired the FEC as a Republican Commissioner, called Ms. Clarke ``one of the foremost legal experts in the country on voting rights'' and described her as ``smart, honest, and deeply committed to equal justice under law.''

Tray Grayson, former Secretary of State from Kentucky, who is a Republican and served as chairperson of the Republican Association of Secretaries of State, sent a letter expressing his strong support of Ms. Clarke.

And we have also heard from former Assistant Attorneys General of the Civil Rights Division who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, who wrote:

We found Ms. Clarke to be an excellent candidate from the standpoint of experience, temperament and commitment to the rule of law. She has the experience, the commitment and the passion to do this job.

I am joined by a number of our colleagues today. Senator Stabenow was here earlier. Senator Hirono is with us on the floor to stand up for Ms. Gupta and Ms. Clarke and to reject the falsehoods we have heard from our colleagues on the other side. But we are also here to make the case for why we must seize this historic opportunity to send two women of color to lead the Justice Department.

So at this pivotal moment we live in, at this very moment, my message to my friends, Vanita and Kristen, today, is this: We have your backs, just as you have the backs of the people of this country.

Those jurors in Minnesota, they are not talking to each other about if they are Democrats or Republicans. They have a job to do. The witnesses that came forward in that case, people who just happened to be there--a store clerk doing his job, a man who just happened to walk by, the police officers who testified--they didn't ask people what political party they were in. They just came forward. That is why I ask my colleagues to step back and think about what justice really means today and what it will mean tomorrow, and ask them to support Ms. Gupta and Ms. Clarke to serve with Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco to run the Department of Justice.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source