By Eric Jankiewicz
After months of delay and political games, former Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch was sworn in Monday as the country’s first female African-American attorney general.
Lynch was nominated to replace Eric Holder in November, but her nomination was held up in congress during a fight over abortion language in a human trafficking bill that Republicans used to stall Lynch’s installation.
President Barack Obama hailed the vote and said “America will be better for it.”
The Senate voted 56-43 to confirm Lynch six months after she was nominated. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), one of Lynch’s fiercest critics, was the only senator to skip the final vote, even though he had demanded his colleagues oppose her. And he said that Lynch would violate the Constitution.
In New York, where she served as the attorney for the Eastern District, which covers Queens and Brooklyn, officials lauded what they saw as a confirmation caught up in political crosswinds.
“After a shameful, partisan delay forced on the American people by Senate Republicans, Loretta Lynch has finally been confirmed as attorney general,” said U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D–Howard Beach). “She is a consummate law enforcement professional with an unparalleled track record of keeping communities safe and protecting the civil rights of the vulnerable. Ms. Lynch will make a tremendous attorney general. Brooklyn’s loss is America’s gain.”
And U.S. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-Astoria) praised Lynch for her work in the Eastern District.
“Ms. Lynch’s record is exemplary. She has been highly effective in her role as a U.S. attorney prosecuting political corruption, terrorism, narcotics, gang and Mafia cases, and sex trafficking,” Maloney said. “In her highest-profile case, she won a 30-year conviction of a police officer who had sodomized plaintiff Abner Louima with a broomstick at a police station, causing injuries that defense attorneys falsely attributed to homosexual sex. She won the case in part by breaking through the Blue Wall of Silence and persuading two officers to testify against the defendant.”
Lynch will be replacing Holder, who served more than six years as attorney general, and she is the 83rd attorney general. She was born in North Carolina and began working in the Eastern District in the 1990s as a drug and violent-crime prosecutor.
Lynch graduated from Harvard in 1981 and from Harvard Law School in 1984.
Reach reporter Eric Jankiewicz by e-mail at ejank
