- Sen. Ron Johnson has put a "hold" on Biden's pick to oversee the hundreds of January 6 prosecutions.
- The Republican wants the Justice Department to respond to his June inquiry about the wave of cases.
- Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton previously said the delay tactic is not related to the nominee himself.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who has downplayed the Capitol attack as a largely "peaceful protest," is blocking the confirmation of President Joe Biden's pick to oversee the hundreds of prosecutions stemming from the violence in Washington on January 6.
Johnson's office in a statement to Insider acknowledged his role in the "hold" on the nomination of Matt Graves, a former federal prosecutor whom Biden named in July as his choice for US attorney in Washington, DC.
A spokesperson for Johnson said the delay tactic is intended to pressure the Justice Department to respond to a June letter in which Senate Republicans appeared to equate the attack on the Capitol to the social unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd in police custody.
"The Biden administration has been completely unresponsive to oversight and lacks transparency not only to Congress but the American people," said Alexa Henning, a spokesperson for Johnson.
Henning added that the Republican lawmaker "will be happy to release the hold" once the Justice Department responds to his letter requesting information on the "unequal application of justice between the individuals who breached the Capitol" and those involved in the social unrest that followed Floyd's murder in 2020.
On January 6, Johnson was serving as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, a platform he used during the Trump administration to spread conspiracy theories about the FBI and CIA conspiring to bring down the former president. Johnson, who is up for reelection to a third term in 2022, has in recent months said he did not feel threatened on January 6.
In a radio interview, Johnson said he would have felt more threatened if Black Lives Matter protestors had stormed the Capitol rather than Trump supporters. Johnson has also asserted without evidence that the FBI knew more about the planning before the January 6 attack than it has revealed so far.
Insider on Monday reported that the Republicans' "hold" was not based on any objection to Graves, whose nomination advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in late September without objection. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who represents the District of Columbia in Congress as a non-voting member, told Insider that Graves' nomination was "being used for leverage," but she declined to specify the reason for the hold or identify the Republicans behind it.
"We've learned this on condition that we not speak about it specifically, but I can tell you that what we have learned is that the Graves nomination is not being held up for any reason connected to the nomination. And I can also say we do expect approval of this nomination eventually," Norton said Monday.
"'Caught in the fire' is how I would put it," she added, "because it doesn't have anything to do with him."
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment. Earlier in the week, several senators — including Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee — told Insider they were unaware of the hold.
Johnson was joined by four other Republicans — Sens. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Rick Scott, and Tommy Tuberville — in the June letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland. The senators said the Justice Department's "apparent unwillingness to punish these individuals who allegedly committed crimes during the spring and summer 2020 protests stands in stark contrast to the harsher treatment of the individuals charged in connection with the January 6" breach of the Capitol.
That comparison has triggered contentious moments in court proceedings for some of the hundreds charged for their roles in the January 6 attack, in which hordes of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a bid to block the certification of Biden's electoral victory. In October, Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected comparisons between the January 6 insurrection and the social unrest of the 2020 summer, as she sentenced a Texas man who had pleaded guilty to illegally demonstrating inside the Capitol.
"To compare the actions of people around the country protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and downplays the very real danger that the crowd on January 6 posed to our democracy," said Chutkan, a 2014 appointee to the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
Her remark came days after Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, suggested in court that the Justice Department should have been more "even-handed" in its approach to prosecuting Capitol rioters.
Norton, who recommended Graves to the White House following a fast-tracked search process, told Insider in a statement Wednesday that she was confident the Senate would confirm Graves and that "there is no equivalency between the insurrection by the violent mob (many now being prosecuted) who invaded the Capitol and the largely peaceful protests over racial justice issues."
'No cost to the District'
With a staff of more than 600, the US attorney's office in Washington is the largest of the federal prosecutors' offices and has an unusual jurisdiction, handling both federal and local cases.
Since January, the office has spearheaded the more than 600 prosecutions that have emerged from the deadly attack on the Capitol. So far, 100 participants in the Capitol attack have pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the violence on January 6.
The US attorney in Washington will also figure prominently in any consideration of criminal contempt of Congress charges stemming from the House investigation into the Capitol breach. On Tuesday, the House committee investigating the January 6 attack is set to meet to consider a referral recommending that the Justice Department prosecute Steve Bannon, Trump's former chief strategist, over his defiance of a congressional subpoena.
The Biden administration moved to quickly name US attorneys to lead the more than 90 federal prosecutors' offices spread across the country. Norton previously told Insider in June that she felt the White House "rushed" her, in part, to have a US attorney of its choosing in charge of the Capitol riot cases.
The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Graves' nomination in late September as part of a slate of US attorney picks. Of the seven nominees voted out of committee without objection, Graves is the only one who has yet to win confirmation.
The Senate confirmed the six others — including Erek Barron, the US attorney in Maryland, and Nicholas Brown, now the top federal prosecutor in Seattle — on September 30.
Sen. Richard Durbin, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Insider on Monday that his staff "mentioned a name" earlier in the day who was subject to a hold. But he was unsure if his staff was addressing Graves' nomination.
"I don't know details, so I couldn't share it with you, and I'm not sure he was the name that was mentioned to me," he told Insider.
A Democratic Senate aide said Graves' nomination is "currently subject to a Republican hold, but efforts are underway to have that hold released and have Graves confirmed."
Graves served for nearly a decade as a career prosecutor in the US attorney's office in the District of Columbia, where he rose to lead the fraud and public corruption unit. In 2016, he left the office to join the law firm DLA Piper, where his clients included Coca-Cola, Nike, and General Electric, according to his financial disclosure.
His tenure at the Justice Department was highlighted by the prosecution of former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., an Illinois Democrat who pleaded guilty in 2013 to using campaign funds to cover personal expenses and make lavish purchases. Jackson, a son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, was later sentenced to 30 months in federal prison.
In March, Biden named Channing Phillips, a veteran of the federal prosecutor's office, to lead it on an acting basis until the Senate confirmed a US attorney. Phillips, who twice previously served as acting US attorney, inherited a federal prosecutor's office that found itself repeatedly embroiled in controversy under the Trump administration as political appointees at the Justice Department intervened in prosecutions to benefit Trump's allies.
Norton told Insider that she saw "no urgency" with the hold on Graves' nomination because of the experience Phillips brings to the office.
"Fortunately there's no cost to the district because it has a prior US attorney handling issues," she said of Phillips. "He knows exactly how the district would have wanted these issues handled."
An earlier version of this story was published on October 18th.
