It’s too bad someone can’t put a “procedural hold” on Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance that would crimp what essentially is his pro-crime politicking.
In June, Vance announced a procedural hold on all appointments for U.S. attorneys across the country, including April Perry, whom President Joe Biden had appointed to fill the seat for the Northern District of Illinois. Under the Senate’s byzantine rules, just one senator can block the confirmation of a U.S. attorney.
That has left northern Illinois with no one in the top job since John Lausch stepped down in March 2023. All because Vance, who pretty much owes his job to former President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement, thinks Trump should be above the law instead of facing the four indictments and 88 criminal charges federal and state prosecutors have brought against him.
Because Vance has not relented, Biden on Wednesday appointed Perry to serve as a U.S. district court judge for the Northern District of Illinois, making it unlikely anyone else will be appointed to fill the U.S. attorney seat until after the November election. No U.S. attorney nominee since 1981 had to wait as long as Perry did for Senate confirmation. In September, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., recommended Perry’s nomination.
Vance’s treatment of Perry has been beyond shameful.
“It is just a crime what they did to April Perry’s nomination,” Ron Safer, former head of the criminal division in the Chicago U.S. attorney’s office, told us. “She should be the U.S. attorney. She is supremely qualified, [and] it is important for the office to have a woman for the first time in history at the head of the office.”
Vance’s hostage-taking is also bad for the efforts to fight crime in the Northern District of Illinois, which serves some 9 million people in 18 counties. The federal prosecutors in the office of some 155 lawyers are still doing the day-to-day jobs in the district’s Chicago and Rockford offices. But in any large office, having no one at the top can create a vacuum and lead to inertia and uncertainty. That’s what playing politics with a prosecutor’s office can engender.
Vance puts loyalty to Trump above all
Acting U.S. Attorney Morris “Sonny” Pasqual, who was the first assistant under John Lausch, has a depth of experience and is widely regarded as someone with good judgment. Under his leadership, the office secured convictions against longtime 14th Ward Ald. Ed Burke and four former ComEd officials.
But Pasqual has been in limbo for a year. That makes it harder to make personnel and other long-range decisions. And with no Senate-confirmed leader, the northern Illinois office has less political clout within the U.S. Justice Department.
Moreover, Pasqual lacks his own first assistant, someone who normally acts as a sounding board for the U.S. attorney. Prosecutors have wide discretion in bringing charges, negotiating pleas and setting office policy. Thorough discussions are needed to get all that right.
The top job in the criminal division is also vacant. The criminal chief serves a key role in the U.S. attorney’s office, supervising everything that happens in that division, which prosecutes cases involving narcotics, money laundering, violent crimes, financial crimes, securities and commodities fraud, public corruption, organized crime, attacks on national security, cybercrimes and other crimes.
Does Vance think none of that is important? Does he not care about the safety of Americans? Does he put his loyalty to Trump above all of that?
What does Vance, who said he wants to grind the Justice Department “to a halt,” think he will achieve? That federal prosecutors, who have amassed voluminous evidence against Trump, will just drop all the charges because of one intractable senator? Ironically, Vance’s hold on all U.S. attorney appointments has also left the job of U.S. attorney for Northern Ohio, in his home state, without an occupant for the longest stretch in its history.
Trying to get around Vance’s procedural hold is no easy task. If Durbin, for example, tried to pass a so-called “motion to proceed” to end Vance’s hold, such a vote would inevitably be blocked by a filibuster. Efforts over the years to reform procedural holds have gone nowhere in the Senate, which has so many interlocking rules and precedents that attempts to fix something sometimes just make things worse.
Whatever else Vance thinks he is up to, he has made himself a friend of criminals and a foe of a qualified U.S. attorney nominee. He has gained nothing, and Illinois — and the rest of the nation — is suffering.
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