Washington Digest: Senate confirms Lynch as new AG

WASHINGTON — The Senate broke a five-month impasse last week in voting to confirm federal prosecutor Loretta Lynch to become attorney general.

Senators voted 56-43 for Lynch, whose nomination became deeply partisan after she defended President Barack Obama’s executive actions offering a legal path to immigrants who are in the country illegally. The confirmation vote further was held up in a dispute over an unrelated human trafficking bill.

Lynch, 55, becomes the first African-American woman to serve as attorney general. A former U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York, she succeeds Eric Holder, the first African-American to hold the job.

Democrats touted Lynch’s credentials as a career prosecutor and argued Obama should be allowed to have the Cabinet members of his choosing.

“She is a prosecutor’s prosecutor,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. “She’s prosecuted more terrorists than almost anyone on the planet.”

Republicans unhappy with Obama and Holder took out their frustration on Lynch after she said she would continue to uphold administration policies on illegal immigration that bypassed Congress.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Lynch was “lawless.”

In the end, 10 Republicans joined with Democrats to confirm Lynch, including four who are up for re-election in blue states — Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mark Kirk in Illinois, Rob Portman of Ohio and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., voted for Lynch; Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., voted against Lynch.

HOUSE PASSES CYBERBILL

The House passed a bill to encourage private companies to share information with the government on computer hacking threats.

Lawmakers voted 307-116 for a bill formed in response to the latest series of computer attacks including the release of thousands of internal documents from Sony Pictures Entertainment and the theft of consumer credit card data from Target stores.

The bill would offer liability protection to companies that share threat information with the government and each other. Sponsors said safeguards that require personal information to be scrubbed out would protect privacy.

“If a company sees some threat or attack, this bill will allow the company to quickly report information about the problem without fearing a lawsuit so that other companies can take measures to protect themselves,” said Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.

“This bill does not provide the government with any new surveillance authorities,” Nunes said. “To the contrary, it includes robust privacy protections.”

Critics, however, said there were loopholes. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., argued the bill would grant a legal shield to companies even if they fail to act on threat information in a timely manner.

“The unintended effect of these murky liability provisions is that companies would not have the same incentive to report security threats and protect their consumers’ privacy,” Van Hollen said.

Reps. Joe Heck, Cresent Hardy and Mark Amodei, all R-Nev., and Dina Titus, D-Nev., voted for the bill.

Contact Review-Journal Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@reviewjournal.com or 202-783-1760. Find him on Twitter: @STetreaultDC.