Republicans continued to raise a ruckus but they couldn’t keep Rachael Rollins from advancing as President Joe Biden’s nominee to be U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts.
Rollins' nomination was advanced Dec. 2 to the full Senate on a rare procedural vote, a motion to discharge the committee. Her nomination had been stalled since the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocked in September on whether to send it to the Senate floor. Normally, a presidential nominee is advanced without much fanfare, but the long-standing tradition was ignored by Republicans.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) moved to dislodge the nomination from the committee and put it up for a vote. Rollins was advanced 50-47 with all favorable votes coming from Democrats and all opposing votes coming from Republicans. Rollins would be the first black female to become U.S. Attorney in Massachusetts. Her motion is now available for consideration on the Senate floor.
Republicans are objecting to Rollins’ reform-minded approach to prosecuting low-level, non-violent crimes. Critics like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas have focused on a 65-page data-backed policy memo she created in 2019 as District Attorney of Suffolk County. In that memo, Rollins proposes reformed prosecution standards for 15 non-violent crimes, such as misdemeanor trespassing, drug possession, making a threat and breaking and entering.
During the committee consideration of the nomination, Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, summarized the opposition to the Rollins nomination, citing her actions as the Suffolk County, Massachusetts. Grassley said, "Prosecutors publishing a list of crimes they don’t plan to prosecute encourages people to break those laws. I can’t support a nominee who does that, particularly when crime is skyrocketing across the country. Now is not the time to nominate a lenient prosecutor who does not want to do her job."
Those proposals have caused Cotton to say that Rollins “has nothing but contempt for the rule of law.”
Cotton led the opposition to the nomination on the floor. "Now, it is true that we rarely have record votes of U.S. attorneys in the Senate. In fact, I think it has been 28 years. It is also true that Rachael Rollins is so radical that she is without precedent as a nominee to be the U.S. attorney," he said.
Cotton called her a "Soros prosecutor," referring to the efforts by billionaire and liberal activist George Soros to support candidacies of local prosecutors with, what Cotton calls, "the express purpose of igniting revolution and destroying our criminal justice systems from within." Cotton said her decision to not prosecute certain crimes "isn't an exercise of prosecutorial discretion in a case with exceptional circumstances. This is prosecutorial nullification."
He believes these actions call into question her commitment to prosecuting violations of federal law.
"The Legislature of Massachusetts passed criminal laws that prosecutors are elected to enforce, and she refuses to enforce them. What do you think she will do to our Federal criminal laws?" he said.
Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said that the efforts to oppose her nomination were a "Republican effort to politicize her nomination and mischaracterize her record."
“Rachael Rollins is not soft on crime; she is smart on crime," he said. "Yes, District Attorney Rollins is a progressive prosecutor. But more importantly, she is an effective prosecutor."
Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democratic whip and chair of the Judiciary Committee, expressed support for her nomination and cited longstanding committee tradition. Durbin said, "That longstanding precedent—nearly 30 years since the last roll call vote—reflects a number of realities. It reflects deference to the Administration in filling Executive Branch appointments. It reflects respect for the role of home-state Senators in helping choose these chief law enforcement officers. And it reflects an understanding of the vital role that U.S. Attorneys play in our justice system.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) echoed Markey's support. "A dedicated public servant, Rollins has devoted her career to transforming the criminal justice system so that it actually reduces crime and provides equal justice for all. Her reform efforts have frequently focused on the root causes of crime and have taken aim at poverty, substance use disorders, and racial disparity."
Rollins says her policies, outlined on the Suffolk County District Attorney website, are “grounded in progressive prosecution.”
“We start with a presumption that, in most cases, these charges don’t need to be prosecuted,” she said. “Dismissal, diversion, treatment, and services are much more often the appropriate outcomes.”
