Trump's attorney general pick William Barr has enough Senate votes to be confirmed

President Donald Trump's attorney general nominee William Barr has secured enough votes in the Senate to take over the Justice Department as attorney general, where he will oversee special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe.

Barr, 68, was widely expected to be confirmed by the Republican-majority Senate on Thursday. He had served in the same role more than two decades earlier in President George H.W. Bush's administration, and had recently passed procedural hurdles in the Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate in votes that largely fell along party lines.

But the Justice Department veteran still came under heavy scrutiny during his confirmation process. Democrats in particular grilled Barr during congressional testimony about how he would handle Mueller's ongoing probe of Russia's election interference and possible collusion with Trump campaign-related officials.

Barr's rise to become the No. 1 law enforcement official in the country would also give him the responsibility to oversee Mueller's investigation. The previous permanent attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from the government's Russia probes in March 2017 following reports about his contacts with Russia's then-ambassador to the U.S.

Oversight duties fell to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — a circumstance that vexed Trump, who viciously and publicly criticized Sessions' over his recusal until the beleaguered Sessions left the administration in November.

Trump selected Matthew Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney in Iowa, to fill the role in an acting capacity following Sessions' departure. He inherited oversight duties in the Mueller probe, which alarmed Democrats and other critics who were skeptical of his past comments about it. For instance, Whitaker notably argued in an August 2017 op-ed for CNN that Mueller's investigation is "dangerously close to crossing" the so-called red line not to look into the Trump family's finances.

Barr, in contrast, has said that he considers Mueller a friend, and vowed to make the conclusions of the special counsel's probe as public as he could manage. He even pushed back on Trump's oft-repeated characterization of the Russia investigation as a "witch hunt" during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in mid-January.

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from Top News & Analysis https://cnb.cx/2GFXWKq