Senate Confirms President Booker's Own Former Defense Lawyer as Attorney General, 50-49, on a Party-Line Vote

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted 50-49, nearly along party lines, to confirm President Booker's former personal criminal-defense lawyer as Attorney General, installing the man who represented the President in his own legal troubles at the head of the department that investigates and prosecutes on the President's behalf.

The confirmation was narrow enough that two senators from the President's own party crossed the aisle to oppose it, a rare crack that briefly imperiled the nomination before the remaining votes were assembled. Supporters called the new Attorney General a superbly qualified advocate finally bringing accountability to a politicized Justice Department. Opponents called him a personal fixer handed the keys to federal law enforcement.

The Press notes it has both of these statements on file from four years ago, verbatim, with the party labels switched, and that the phrase 'restoring integrity to the Justice Department' has meant 'installing our lawyer' in every administration that has ever said it.

Legal-ethics scholars observed that an Attorney General is meant to represent the United States rather than the President, a distinction the office has spent its entire history rediscovering, losing and rediscovering again on a partisan schedule. 'The client is supposed to be the country,' one former official said, 'but the country rarely calls at 2 a.m.'

Asked whether elevating his personal lawyer to the nation's top law-enforcement post posed a conflict, the White House said the new Attorney General would serve all Americans impartially, beginning, presumably, with the one who hired him first.