Senate confirms No. 2 Justice official

The Senate on Wednesday approved Sally Yates to be the number two official at the Department of Justice.

{mosads}Senators voted 84-12 on Yates’s nomination to be the deputy attorney general. The vote follows approval last month of Loretta Lynch’s attorney general nomination.

Yates’s confirmation will drop her into the middle of the ongoing battle over President Obama’s immigration policy.

Republicans said ahead of the vote that while they didn’t have personal objections to Yates, they would vote against her because of the president’s executive actions on immigration.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) voted against Yates, although he called her a “responsible person.”

“Miss Yates is, I think, a responsible person but she is the point person, the supervisor of the litigation that has gone awry in a number of ways in Texas and fundamentally is seeking to advance an unconstitutional power for the chief executive,” he said. “So therefore I have chosen and say I’ll not vote for her confirmation of that basis.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) suggested after that vote that he hopes Yates will distance herself from the president, saying that he hopes “she will show independence as she provides leadership at the department.”

Despite the Republican objections, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) predicted ahead of the votes that “she will be easily confirmed.”

Leahy added that he believes Yates is “an ideal person” to serve as the deputy attorney general.

Yates was nominated for the position in January, but a vote on her nomination faced delays in the Senate Judiciary Committee. She’s served as a U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia since 2010.

Presidential hopefuls Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), as well as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is considering a bid, supported Obama’s nominee.

Presidential contenders Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is in New York, and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) both missed the vote.