U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch is seen in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Saturday, Nov. 8, 2014, after President Barack Obama nominated her to be the next Attorney General succeeding Eric Holder. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

By Freddie Allen
NNPA Senior Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – In recent weeks, Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, claimed that President Barack Obama didn’t love America, blamed the president for creating the atmosphere that led to the shootings of two police officers being shot in Ferguson, Mo., and said that he should speak more like the beleaguered Bill Cosby on issues of race.

There is one issue, however, that he is in total agreement with President Obama — Loretta Lynch’s qualification to become the next attorney general.

“Loretta Lynch is more than qualified. She’s over-qualified to be the attorney general,” said Giuliani. “She is as well-qualified as some of the bests attorney generals that we’ve had.”

During a call with reporters last Friday, Giuliani admitted that he didn’t often agree with President Obama, but whether the president is a Republican or a Democrat he is entitled to his choice.

The former mayor and presidential candidate said that the confirmation process has become distorted over time.

“Republicans torture Democrats and Democrats torture Republicans. Who started it? Only God knows and it has now become the Hatfields and McCoys,” said the former New York City mayor.

Giuliani said that he was impressed by the way that Lynch, as a United States attorney in New York, prosecuted cases to protect New York City and, on the few occasions that she had to investigate the city, she was fair.

“She makes decisions on the merit,” said Giuliani. “She’s not a political operative in any sense.”

Lynch, who was first confirmed as a United States attorney during the Clinton administration in 1999 and again during the Obama administration in 2010, has also undergone three FBI background investigations.

Giuliani joined a chorus of lawmakers, law enforcement officials and civil rights leaders urging Senate Republicans to confirm Lynch.

Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), called the delay in confirming Loretta Lynch political.

“The politics that Republicans have played with her nomination are deplorable and opposition to her nomination is nothing more than a political ploy to once again use any means necessary to show their disdain for President Obama,” said Butterfield. “This is a travesty.  We should not deny the president of the United States his choice of a qualified candidate.”

Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of 200 civil and human rights groups, said that the Senate Republican majority is using every excuse it can find to delay or obstruct Lynch’s confirmation.

“And the one thing these excuses all have in common is that none of them have anything to do with the nominee herself,” said Henderson. “We know that senators can walk and chew gum at the same time and that this is just the latest turn in what has been the most mishandled and manipulated confirmation process in memory.”

Even Eric Holder, the current attorney general who was held in contempt of Congress on a Republican-majority vote in 2012 over a gun trade investigation, recently quipped that the Republican Congress has delayed the Lynch confirmation because they discovered a new fondness for him.

Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said that when it comes to the Senate calendar, Loretta Lynch was being asked “to sit in the back of the bus,” and that the delay was, “beneath the decorum and dignity of the United States Senate.”

Louis Freeh, a partner of Pepper Hamilton, LLP and a former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), agreed that politics is driving opposition to Lynch’s nomination.

“The nomination is being held up for political reasons. Some of the senators didn’t like her answers on immigration,” said Freeh. “The fact of the matter is that she supports the immigration policies of the president. What nominee would come before the Senate for the attorney generalship who did not support the policies of the president? Nobody has made any credible arguments about her competency her independence or her integrity.”

Freeh continued: “You don’t want any attorney general to start his or her tenure there otherwise qualified with that sort of a cloud.”

Giuliani said that the president is entitled to appointments that agree with his point of view and that playing partisan politics over nominations not only impedes the ability of any president to get his job done, but also discourages people from going through this process.

“It is a golden opportunity for my political party to show that we’re going back to the original intent of the framers of the Constitution in the way that the confirmation process should work,” said Giuliani. “Maybe, just maybe, if we have a Republican president two years from now we can appeal to the Democrats to do the same thing.”

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