McConnell rejects calls not to return next week and says judicial nominees on agenda
(CNN) — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected calls not to return to session next week while the coronavirus epidemic is still on the rise across the country and in Washington in particular, saying the chamber has essential constitutionally-mandated duties to carry out, including the confirmation of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees.
“I think we can conduct our business safely,” McConnell told Fox News in an interview Thursday. “We’ve got a whole lot of other people showing up for work during the pandemic. It’s time for the Senate to do that as well. We have many confirmations, for example. The Senate is in the personnel business. The House is not.”
Eighty-six-year-old Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California called on McConnell on Wednesday to reverse course saying Democratic leaders who run the House were smart to follow the guidance of the Attending Physician of Congress, Dr. Brian Monahan, who urged them not to bring lawmakers back next week.
Asked if he had gotten different advice from Monahan about whether the Senate — which has only 100 members compared to 435 in the House — should return to work, McConnell would not directly answer other than to say, “we can modify our routines in ways that are smart and safe.”
For her part, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the House’s current plan is to return the week after next to advance another coronavirus relief package.
“We’re not coming back next week,” Pelosi said during her weekly press conference. “Our plan is to come back the following week.”
But she also said the House is “at the mercy of the virus” and the schedule will depend on guidance from the Capitol attending physician and the sergeant at arms.
Democrats are also troubled by the expectation the Senate will move soon to confirm a young and District Court judge from Kentucky — Justin Walker — to a seat on the powerful US Court of Appeals for the DC circuit, often considered the second most powerful court in the country. Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote this week to Chairman Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, urging him to put off confirmation hearings and focus the committee’s attention on battling coronavirus, such as keeping law enforcement and corrections employees safe.
On the new charges from lawyers for former Trump National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn that the FBI might have acted improperly during their investigation into him, McConnell said “if all this proves to be true” you would have a “major error on the part of the top leadership of the FBI.”
Flynn’s attorneys made public on Wednesday a handwritten note from Bill Priestap, the then-counterintelligence director at the FBI, that mused how agents should approach a critical interview with Trump’s first national security adviser in the White House in January 2017.
Lawyers for Flynn, who pleaded guilty late in 2017 to lying to the FBI about conversations with Russia’s ambassador, said they believe the document along with others support their accusations of investigative misconduct. It’s now part of their effort in court to try to exonerate Flynn, and part of their public relations push for a presidential pardon for Flynn. While Flynn’s legal team has alleged the Justice Department and FBI wrongfully targeted Flynn, the Justice Department in court has defended the handling of the case.
McConnell, however, refused to weigh-in on whether Trump should pardon Flynn or if former FBI Director James Comey should be charged for his role in that matter.
This story has been updated with additional developments Thursday.
