Mazie Hirono Grills Assistant Attorney General Nominee On Attempt To End Birthright Citizenship

2 days ago

At today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) questioned Assistant Attorney General nominees.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:04As part of my responsibility to determine the fitness

00:07of all nominees who come before any of my committees,

00:10I ask the following two initial questions,

00:12and if we can start with Mr. Shumate

00:14and go right down the line.

00:16Since you became a legal adult,

00:18have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors

00:22or committed any verbal or physical harassment

00:24or assault of a sexual nature?

00:26No.

00:28No, Senator.

00:30No, Senator.

00:32Have you ever faced discipline

00:33or entered into a settlement

00:34relating to this kind of conduct?

00:37No, Senator.

00:38No, Senator.

00:39No, Senator.

00:41This is for Mr. Eisenberg.

00:43There have been calls, including from the authors

00:45of Project 2025,

00:47which I think is generally seen as a blueprint

00:50for this administration.

00:52But Project 2025 calls for the revival

00:55of the National Security Division of DOJ

01:00to revive the so-called China Initiative.

01:03If confirmed as head of the National Security Division,

01:07do you plan on reviving the China Initiative?

01:10Yes or no?

01:11I plan on looking at whether something like that

01:13should be stood up again,

01:15but I don't have any concrete plans about that.

01:17Do you have any concerns about bringing back that initiative?

01:20Do you have any awareness of what that initiative led to?

01:25I'm sorry.

01:27In terms of the litigation that arose

01:30from the China Initiative

01:31during the first Trump administration?

01:33Just tell me yes or no if you have an awareness.

01:35I did hear of some of it, yeah.

01:38Okay, let me just say that the program was supposedly

01:42about countering Chinese government espionage

01:44and intellectual property theft,

01:46but it drifted far from that purpose.

01:49Instead, it focused largely on university professors,

01:52most of them of Chinese heritage,

01:55who had alleged paperwork errors in grant applications

02:00in the Department of Justice,

02:01which usually has a really great track record

02:04in convicting the defendants,

02:07many of whom plead guilty.

02:08But in the case of the China Initiative,

02:11the conviction rate was very low,

02:14practically non-existent.

02:16So for the dozens of cases

02:19against basically Chinese professors that the DOJ brought,

02:24most of them were tossed out for lack of evidence.

02:28And we know that the China Initiative was misguided,

02:32a waste of resources,

02:34and seemingly based more on the ethnicity of defendants

02:37whose lives were in many ways just destroyed

02:43by DOJ going after them

02:45than on the crimes they supposedly committed.

02:48So I would say that if you're gonna look

02:50into reinitiating the China Initiative,

02:54I would look at the history of this initiative

02:57and do not go there.

03:00For Mr. Shumate,

03:02you defended President Trump's birthright citizenship order

03:05as though by waiving an executive order,

03:08he could get rid of the provisions of the 14th Amendment.

03:12You defended that order

03:15to get rid of birthright citizenship,

03:17and the judge that decided the case

03:21called this order that Trump made blatantly unconstitutional

03:32and the judge had difficulty understanding

03:37how any lawyer could make the argument

03:39that you were making.

03:41And three courts of appeals

03:43have refused DOJ's request to stay,

03:46so there are some pending TROs.

03:49The administration then went to the Supreme Court,

03:53and the Supreme Court has not weighed in yet

03:56and set a leisurely briefing schedule

03:58suggesting that the Supreme Court

04:00doesn't consider the government's defense of the order

04:03to be worthy of quick consideration,

04:06which makes me wonder whether you are prepared

04:11to argue before these courts

04:14what one court said blatantly unconstitutional order.

04:19So, Mr. Shumate, is that what you're gonna keep doing?

04:25Senator, thank you for the question.

04:27Since that first hearing

04:28that Senator Durbin referenced earlier today,

04:31the department has filed many briefs

04:33explaining its view of the 14th Amendment

04:37and the legality of the president's birthright order.

04:41Because it's pending litigation,

04:42it wouldn't be appropriate for me

04:44to discuss the merits of the litigation.

04:45I think that, you know what,

04:46I have to say, Mr. Shumate,

04:48that this is one order that was just,

04:51there's just a lot of precedent for birthright citizenship

04:56and for you all to spend your time and resources

04:59going after this as a way to make a point,

05:02a political point, basically,

05:03is not the way that I would expect

05:06the Justice Department to comport itself.

05:08Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

05:12Mr. Shumate.

Mazie Hirono Grills Assistant Attorney General Nominee On Attempt To End Birthright Citizenship

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