Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) has invoked the Senate’s “blue slip” tradition to block President Trump’s appointees to serve as U.S. attorneys for two of the most prestigious districts in the country, the southern and eastern districts of New York.
Schumer announced Wednesday that he will use his senatorial privilege to block Trump’s nomination of former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Jay Clayton, a Trump loyalist, to serve as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and Joseph Nocella, a prominent local Republican, to serve as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District.
“Donald Trump has made clear he has no fidelity to the law and intends to use the Justice Department, the U.S. Attorney offices and law enforcement as weapons to go after his perceived enemies,” Schumer said in a statement.
“Such blatant and depraved political motivations are deeply corrosive to the rule of law and leaves me deeply skeptical of the Donald Trump’s intentions for these important positions. For that reason, I will not return the blue slip for the U.S. Attorney nominees for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York,” he said.
Schumer’s action, if honored by his Republican colleagues, means that Clayton and Nocella may not reach a final confirmation vote on the Senate floor.
But Trump is likely to pressure Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to advance the nominees despite Schumer’s objection.
Clayton, who served as a mergers specialist as a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell before heading the SEC from 2017 to 2020, doesn’t have any prosecutorial experience.
The Southern District of New York is one of the most prestigious federal prosecutorial offices in the nation and handles many high-profile and highly complex cases.
Nocella, a Long Island judge, previously served as assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District in the early 1990s. He is well-connected to the Nassau County Republican Party.
The Eastern District is another powerful prosecutorial office that has handled major cases, including the prosecution of mob boss John Gotti, the Bonanno crime family and the R&B singer R. Kelly.
The Senate’s blue slip tradition allows senators to withhold approval of judicial and prosecutorial nominees to U.S. district courts and U.S. attorneys’ offices in their home states.
The Senate Judiciary Committee chair has typically required that both home-state senators return blue slips for a nominee to the panel before moving that nominee to the floor.
Blue-slip approval used to apply to federal appellate court positions, but senators began to phase out the requirement for circuit court nominees in the early 2000s.
Then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) advanced a handful of nominees who did not have their blue slips returned in 2003 and 2004.
Grassley, who first became Judiciary Committee chair in 2015, did not allow blue-slip objections to hold up Trump’s circuit court nominees during his first term.
Grassley, however, has continued to allow senators to block federal district court-level nominees by withholding blue slips.
The Iowa senator told The New York Times he would continue to honor the tradition for senators objecting to federal appointments within their states.
“The answer is yes,” Grassley told the Times. “If they are from the state the nomination comes from.”
