Laura Barron-Lopez:
Clayton served as chair of the SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, during Donald Trump’s first administration.
And Clayton has no criminal law experience and he’s going to have to shift to work on that for what is known as the sovereign district, one of the most independent districts, with this nomination. His role is notable because this office handles a lot of high-profile cases, particularly federal crimes and corruption cases.
And so the big question with this nomination, Amna, is, does Clayton help Donald Trump pursue what he campaigned on in terms of prosecuting his enemies? And then another announcement that we just got moments ago was that Donald Trump has nominated Todd Blanche to be deputy attorney general, so the second highest ranking official at the Justice Department, Todd Blanche, who is Donald Trump’s personal attorney, who represented him for 18 months during the criminal hush money trial in Manhattan.
And when it comes to responses to a lot of these nominations so far, Amna, we did have one that our Lisa Desjardins got from Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor, in response to RFK Jr. He’s the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor Pensions Committee. And he said ultimately he’s open to RFK Jr.’s nomination and that he wants to learn more about it.
And that’s kind of what we’re hearing a decent amount from Senate Republicans, which is that they are open to a number of these nominations, despite the fact that many of these people appear to have very little experience in the roles that they may take.
