Nomination of Vanita Gupta
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as my friend the Republican leader likes to remind us, the Senate is not just a legislative body; we are also in the personnel business. One of the Senate's core responsibilities is to provide advice and consent for the President's nominees for a range of important jobs throughout the Federal Government. In fact, it is a constitutional duty of the Senate to perform that function.
When the President is of the opposing party, there is all but a guarantee that you will not see eye to eye with every nominee, but the process isn't just about politics or judging nominees based on whether their opinions align with your own. As I see it, we are charged with evaluating these individuals to see if they are qualified not only to carry out the duties of their position but will also do so with honor and integrity.
Take Attorney General Merrick Garland, for example. When the Senate considered his nomination, it became clear that he had both the experience and the temperament to lead the Department of Justice. Do we agree on everything? No. But he committed to do everything in his power to keep politics out of the Department of Justice, and I have no reason to doubt his credibility.
The same could be said of the President's nominee for Deputy Attorney General, Lisa Monaco, who was confirmed yesterday by the Senate. Ms. Monaco is a longtime public servant who previously served for 15 years at the Department of Justice. Throughout her career, she has earned the respect of folks on both sides of the aisle, and I believe she will bring a wealth of experience and institutional knowledge to the Department.
So my point is, I have supported the majority of President Biden's nominees thus far, and every single nominee has received bipartisan support at some level. But unfortunately, it looks like we are about ready to break that record of bipartisanship.
Today, the Senate will vote on the nomination of Vanita Gupta to serve as Associate Attorney General, the third highest official at the Department of Justice. Unlike previous nominees who have received bipartisan support, there is not a single person on this side of the aisle who believes that Ms. Gupta is fit to serve as the third in command at the Department of Justice.
I can't predict what the final vote will be. It will be at 2:30. But I hear nobody on this side of the aisle saying she is an exemplar of the type of person who should serve in the Department of Justice.
As I said, this is not about politics; nor are those of us who are opposed to her nomination opposed because of her gender or race. To the contrary, those are irrelevant. Instead, the lack of support for Ms. Gupta is a result of her radical record far outside the mainstream and her career as a partisan activist. In fact, she has championed radical policies basically all of her professional career.
In addition, throughout the confirmation process, Ms. Gupta was asked about the long, long list of controversial, misleading, and sometimes outright false public statements that she has made in the past--her statement before the Judiciary last summer, for example, that we should effectively defund the police; her op-ed that argued we should effectively revoke qualified immunity for law enforcement in civil lawsuits; but worst of all were her prior statements on drug policy.
In 2012, Ms. Gupta wrote in an op-ed in the Huffington Post that ``States should decriminalize simple possession of all drugs.'' ``All drugs.'' This is obviously an incredibly controversial statement and way out of step with most Americans' views, for good reason. What she said is, as long as they were small amounts, she would legalize heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, ecstasy, methamphetamine, you name it.
When Ms. Gupta tried to distance herself from these previous positions that are published in black and white, here is what the Washington Post Fact Checker said:
For this tango of previously unacknowledged flip-flops, Gupta earns an Upside-Down Pinocchio.
Now I have seen a one Pinocchio, two Pinocchio, three Pinocchio, even a four, but I have never seen an upside-down Pinocchio for a ``tango of previously unacknowledged flip-flops.'' The Fact Check examined Ms. Gupta's confusing then and now statements on police budgets, qualified immunity, and drug policy, and that is what they found.
Now, I understand and respect the fact that people's opinions can change over time. As we learn new information or have different experiences in life, we all understand that one's views can change. But there is a big difference between honestly forming a new opinion and undergoing a confirmation conversion to bury radical views on controversial subjects. After all, how could anyone support a nominee who advocated the decriminalization of all drugs, especially for the No. 3 spot at the Department of Justice? I am not sure anyone in this Chamber, Republican or Democrat, could support someone to serve in the upper echelon of the Justice Department who supported the legalization of heroin, fentanyl, and other dangerous street narcotics. That is why she attempted to whitewash it. She knew she couldn't get nominated, much less confirmed, if she didn't.
But here is what we know about drug abuse in America. This is a map of national opioid death rates in America. As you can see, they go from the dark colors, which is where the death rate is 29 to 43 per 100,000 population, to the slightly lighter range, which is 20 to 29, roughly, people per 100,000, and then the lighter ones, obviously, until you get to the lowest one, which is 3.5 to 10.9.
Every community in America has felt the pain and anguish from the opioid crisis. In 2019, there were more than 70,000 overdose deaths in America. There were 70,000 Americans who lost their lives. We are still waiting on complete figures from 2020, but preliminary data shows things are trending in the wrong direction. From June 2019 through May 2020, more than 81,000 Americans have died from drug overdoses.
Fighting the opioid epidemic is a cause every person in this Chamber can get behind because, as you can see, each of our States has been impacted. In 2016, thanks to the hard work of a bipartisan group of Senators, we passed what became known as the CARA Act--the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act--to help more Americans break this devastating cycle of drug use, drug abuse, and overdose, and we appropriated tens of billions of dollars to fight this scourge.
As I said and as you can see, no State has been spared the pain and suffering from the opioid epidemic, but we do know some have been hit harder than others. For example, one of the States, with the darkest color, with the highest rate of overdose deaths is Ohio. And we can see here what had happened in the period, roughly, from 2009 to 2019.
From 2009 to 2019, 10 years, there were more than 33,000 drug overdoses and deaths in Ohio alone--33,000 Ohioans, each with their unique value, contribution, and story. It is an absolutely heartbreaking number of deaths that should have been prevented.
Another one of those States with the worst problems with opioids was New Hampshire. In 2013, the drug overdose deaths per capita were slightly above the national average, at 15 deaths per 100,000. In New Hampshire, in 2016, just 3 years later, the death rate increased 158 percent.
First responders across New Hampshire experienced a dramatic increase in the calls they got for overdoses so they started carrying Narcan, a medication used to reverse an overdose if you get there in time before the overdosed individual dies. They carry them in their emergency gear because these overdose calls became so common.
Another one of those States hit particularly hard is West Virginia. In 2019, West Virginia had the highest overdose deaths per capita. For every 100,000 population, more than 52 were from an overdose, double the national figure. That is 21.6 per 100,000 that went up--that is the national--and the West Virginia number is double, as you can see.
Our friend Senator Capito has been a tireless advocate for West Virginia families, many of whom have felt the pain of this crisis firsthand. She recently wrote an op-ed about this nominee and the contradictory and confounding statements she has made in the past, particularly on drug policy.
Senator Capito wrote:
It's hard to imagine the level of devastation [that] we would see if all of these drugs actually were legalized. And, it's even harder to imagine that a nominee for a critical law enforcement position would hold this view.
I completely agree with our friend from West Virginia. Given the ruin that the opioid epidemic has dealt in communities across the country, I can't even begin to imagine how much worse it would be had the States heeded Ms. Gupta's call to decriminalize all drugs for personal use. If fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, and other highly addictive drugs were decriminalized, how many more Americans would become addicted? How many more would have died? How many more families would suffer the loss of a child? a sibling? a parent?
I am profoundly concerned by Ms. Gupta's prior statements on drug policy, as well as her radical statements on defunding the police, disarming the police in civil lawsuits by eliminating qualified immunity, abolishing the death penalty for the most heinous crimes, and so much more.
Worse, though, is her inability to be honest about her position on issues that would directly fall within her purview at the Department of Justice. The American people deserve to know that leaders at any government Department or Agency--but especially the Department of Justice--they deserve to know that these public servants are honest and will tell them the truth. As Ms. Gupta's upside-down Pinocchio indicates, no Senator can have the confidence that Ms. Gupta would be honest with them or tell them the truth.
We hold hearings. We put witnesses under oath promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God, and we don't expect people will come into those hearings and lie. We ask followup questions. Perhaps there was some misunderstanding that you would like to clear up.
Believe it or not, Ms. Gupta answered a written question under oath stating that she had never advocated for the decriminalization of all drugs, even though in 2012, in an op-ed she published in the Huff Post, she did exactly that. But then, for some reason, she decided to lie about it under oath to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. If she would lie to us, she would lie to you. And I fail to see how, for some reason, we think she will change the way she acts or behaves or improve her standard of behavior when it comes to honesty and truthfulness. We hold these hearings and ask these questions to understand the opinions and the character and the motivation of these nominees. But based on what the Senate has learned about Vanita Gupta, I don't believe she is fit to serve as the Associate Attorney General.
The Department of Justice, perhaps more than any other Department or Agency, must be led by men and women of honesty and integrity, people like Merrick Garland and people like Lisa Monaco who received overwhelming bipartisan votes here on the Senate floor. High-ranking public officials at the Department of Justice cannot be motivated by partisanship. They must pursue no other agenda other than fair and impartial justice.
In contrast, Ms. Gupta has shown she is a partisan activist with a penchant for skirting the truth. If confirmed as Associate Attorney General, I believe she has the potential to use the powerful tools at the Department of Justice to wage partisan warfare that has been part of her professional career to this point. If we can't trust her to be honest with us, how can we expect her to fulfill her duty of candor in courtrooms, including all aspects of the legal process that depend on honest, truthful answers and communications.
If we can't depend on her to tell the truth at the Senate Judiciary Committee in the confirmation hearing, how can we depend on her to exercise her duty of candor when applying for a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, for example.
Sadly, I believe Ms. Gupta will be a clear and present danger to the American people if she is given the muscle and might of the Department of Justice, as well as the entire Federal Government of the United States of America.
I cannot support her nomination, and I would urge all of my colleagues to do likewise.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, at the appropriate time, I would ask the Senator to yield for a brief question. But I don't want to interrupt him in his train of thought.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
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Mr. CORNYN. This is the quote from the article that Vanita Gupta wrote on November 4, 2012. It says: ``States should decriminalize simple possession of all drugs, particularly marijuana, and for small amounts of other drugs.''
And then in her sworn testimony, in response to written questions, she said: ``I have never advocated for the decriminalization of all drugs, and I do not support the decriminalization of all drugs.''
In 2012, support for the decriminalization of all drugs; in 2021, ``I have never'' supported ``the decriminalization of all drugs.''
I wonder if my colleague--I just simply can't reconcile those two statements, both given under oath to the Judiciary Committee.
Can you reconcile those statements?
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would ask the Senator to yield for one last question.
We can all understand how people's views change over time, but there is no way to reconcile these two statements, 2012 and 2021, which is the reason I believe that Ms. Gupta, for some reason lost to me, decided to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee two inherently conflicting statements under oath.
She could have gotten out of it the easy way and said: ``Well, I made a mistake'' or ``I forgot'' or ``My views changed over time.'' I would have accepted that. But to come back on questions for the record and to state something that is 180 degrees opposed to her views in 2012--I have not heard her, I have not heard the distinguished majority whip, I have not heard anybody be able to reconcile those two statements.
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