As the cabinet confirmation battles loom for the incoming second administration of President Donald J. Trump, a cadre of anti-Trump Republican Senators stands poised to derail the MAGA agenda by denying President Trump his choices to run the government.
One unexplored facet of that galling political reality is that many of these pseudo-conservatives or ‘Republicans in Name Only,’ voted in support of the very worst of President Joe Biden’s nominees.
Beginning with the federal department most mired in controversy and serious allegations of politicization, bias and weaponization: The Department of Justice, the appointments of several officials are the most illustrative. First and foremost is the leader of the DOJ, Attorney General Merrick Garland followed by: Deputy Attorney General, Lisa Monaco; former Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta; Assistant Attorney General for National Security, Matthew Olsen; Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar; and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Kristen Clarke.
During the 2021 confirmation period, which saw the DOJ basis for organized lawfare against President Trump, his legal team and January 6th protestors form, Republican Senators such as Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and of course, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky led the charge with both votes and procedural maneuvers to facilitate them.
Notably, Sen. Susan Collins appears most repeatedly as the Republican to side with Democrats in order to speed a nominee’s confirmation with Lisa Murkowski also appearing regularly in vote tallies against the rest of the GOP.
Looking at each of these DOJ figures we can begin to assess the damage wrought by them, and by extension the Republicans who voted to approve their nominations.
Attorney General Merrick Garland
While entire political science and legal texts could be filled with the failings of AG Garland, and likely will be, a summary will suffice here. As Steven Cheung, Trump Campaign Communications Director wrote in a September statement, “The disgraceful conduct of Attorney General Merrick Garland has done tremendous damage to a once great institution. Using phony charges to interfere with the presidential election on behalf of the Democrat Party has to be stopped and those driving these Hoaxes have to be held accountable.”
As head of the DOJ, the decisions to raid President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, the illegal appointment of Jack Smith as an ersatz Special Counsel to prosecute the President-elect on bogus charges related to the handling of classified documents, and the concerted politically driven prosecution of Trump and his supporters relative to the January 6th Capitol Riot, all stem from the same font of authority.
In a vote of 70-30 on May 10th 2021 the confirmation of Merrick Garland saw no less than twenty Republicans, including Majority-Leader designee Sen. John Thune as well as Trump ally, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, support the Biden Administration’s spearhead of lawfare.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco
The woman at AG Garland’s right hand has been Deputy AG Lisa Monaco, known for taking the DOJ’s reigns during the Attorney General’s back surgery, but more widely known to Republicans for leading the department to launch an investigation into the GOP’s alternate-elector slates during the 2020 presidential election, seeking to criminalize an electoral college practice that has firm precedent in American history. In 2022, Monaco broke with the DOJ’s standing policy to not comment on active investigations when she told CNN “[f]ederal prosecutors are reviewing fake Electoral College certifications that declared former President Donald Trump the winner of states that he lost.”
Just a year later, Monaco would make headlines by blaming conservatives expressing alarm at the blatant politicization of the DOJ for stoking “threats to public officials, threats to our prosecutors, threats to law enforcement agents who work in the Justice Department, threats to judges,” as well as “threats to kill FBI agents, a Supreme Court justice and three presidential candidates,” according to Breitbart.
Monaco’s confirmation vote presented probably the most troubling of all in that Garland’s #2 whom Trump described in January as “really running the Justice Department, rather viciously and rather illegally,” was confirmed with wide Republican support, opposed only by Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. Ostensibly Trump-supporting Senators such as Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn, Missouri’s Josh Hawley, the venerable Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and John Kennedy of Louisiana all voted in favor of one of DOJ officials most responsible for executing the Democrats vision of lawfare.
Former Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta
One of the most contentious DOJ confirmations of 2021 was easily AAG Vanita Gupta who was ushered into office singlehandedly by Sen. Murkowski in a 51-49 vote despite being grilled by her fellow Republicans for “(1) Her support for eliminating qualified immunity (2) Her support for decriminalizing all drugs (3) Her support for defunding the police (4) Her death penalty record.” Eleven GOP Senators even demanded a second confirmation hearing after she refused to answer their questions during the first hearing, making “misleading statements,” or refusing to answer altogether according to Politico.
Once in office, Gupta spearheaded a lawsuit against Idaho for the state’s ‘trigger law’ that banned most abortions upon the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022. She claimed that “Idaho’s law is contrary to EMTALA (Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act) because it presumptively criminalizes all abortions, making it a felony for doctors to provide emergency treatment required by federal law, even where a denial of care will likely result in the death of the pregnant patient.” The case United States v. Idaho was dismissed by the Supreme Court and is pending in the US District Court.
Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen
Confirmed in a contentious vote by a margin of three Senators, (Murkowski, Graham and Burr if you’re keeping score) at 53-45, Olsen, a former NSA lawyer and security executive of ridesharing firm Uber, gained a measure of infamy expressing great concern about the expiration of a 2008 warrantless wiretap law that Congress chose not to renew in 2023 claiming that “Without 702, we will lose indispensable intelligence for our decision-makers and warfighters, as well as those of our allies. And we have no fallback authority that could come close to making up for that loss.”
The law according to The Washington Post gave “the FBI and the National Security Agency to gather emails, text messages and other electronic data from U.S. tech firms like Google, Microsoft, Apple and Meta without a traditional warrant based on probable cause when the target is a foreigner overseas and it’s for foreign intelligence purposes.”
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar
A similarly divided vote of 53-36 with Sens. Collins, Graham and Mike Crapo of Idaho breaking from the Republican party line brought Biden Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar into office. Arguably, Prelogar, hand in glove with AG Garland, represented the fist of the DOJ hammering more conservative state governments and arguing on behalf of the Biden Administration before the Supreme Court of the United States. In every case pertaining to illegal immigration, challenges to state abortion regulations, in the Discriminatory admission lawsuit of her alma mater Harvard, and of course challenges to COVID vaccine mandates, Prelogar’s was the voice that argued for the Biden White House and against the American people.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Kristen Clarke
Of course, few DOJ officials have been as impactful in an administration focused so keenly on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion measures as AAG for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke. In a razor-thin confirmation vote of 51-48 with Sen. Collins responsible for the sole defection, Clarke was carried into one of the most dangerous possible roles a radical leftist could hold.
Clarke is the very same official who found herself the subject of intense Republican congressional scrutiny including calls for her termination, after evidence emerged that she lied under oath during her confirmation hearings. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) released a letter to Garland in July that demanded “Ms. Clarke’s immediate termination and removal from office,” after it was found she directly lied under oath in reference to being “arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime against any person.”
Cotton wrote, “Ms. Clarke has now admitted that she was arrested in 2006 for attacking and injuring someone with a knife. It has also recently come to light that, shortly before the full Senate voted on her nomination, Ms. Clarke and her publicist contacted the man she attacked in an attempt to cover up her false testimony.”
Clarke argued to CNN in May that while she was arrested, the arrest was later expunged “meaning it was removed from her record and no longer exists – and that she wasn’t required to disclose it.”
Far more controversial though has been Clarke and AG Garland’s continued silence and refusal to address rising antisemitism on U.S. University campuses despite her purported willingness to target “non-criminal acts of bias,” describing the initiative in 2022 by stating “prosecutions alone will not rid us of hate crimes. That is why the Justice Department is also hard at work addressing non-criminal acts of bias that rear their ugly head inside our schools, workplaces and in our neighborhoods. We are also addressing the need for hate crime prevention through education and awareness. This multi-part strategy is critical to eliminating hate, root and branch.”
No Democrat defected on any of the above confirmation votes, so the obvious question we must ask is: How could anyone, let alone a Republican Senator, oppose President Trump’s cabinet nominees?
The Capitol Switchboard is (202-224-3121), we urge CHQ readers and friends to call their Senators TODAY to demand they vote to promptly confirm each and every one of President Trump’s cabinet nominees.
Matthew Holloway is a contributor for Conservative HQ. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@theconservativefreelancer.com.
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