(CNN) — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected calls not to return to session next week while the coronavirus epidemic is still on the rise across the country and in Washington in particular, saying the chamber has essential constitutionally-mandated duties to carry out, including the confirmation of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees.
“I think we can conduct our business safely,” McConnell told Fox News in an interview Thursday. “We’ve got a whole lot of other people showing up for work during the pandemic. It’s time for the Senate to do that as well. We have many confirmations, for example. The Senate is in the personnel business. The House is not.”
Eighty-six-year-old Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California called on McConnell on Wednesday to reverse course saying Democratic leaders who run the House were smart to follow the guidance of the Attending Physician of Congress, Dr. Brian Monahan, who urged them not to bring lawmakers back next week.
Asked if he had gotten different advice from Monahan about whether the Senate — which has only 100 members compared to 435 in the House — should return to work, McConnell would not directly answer other than to say, “we can modify our routines in ways that are smart and safe.”
On a private GOP conference call Thursday, McConnell didn’t offer many details about the Senate’s upcoming agenda or the procedures for carrying out business when the chamber returns next week, according to two people on the call.
McConnell told GOP senators that more guidance will come from the Capitol physician’s office over the next day or so.
There was also discussion about the Senate Rules Committee issuing guidance about allowing Senate committees to conduct confirmation proceedings for nominees without having formal hearings, one of the sources said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Thursday that he will “scrutinize” McConnell’s safety guidelines for returning to session next week, which he said McConnell will release Friday.
Speaking to reporters on a conference call, Schumer said McConnell never consulted him about returning next week and said he will review the GOP leader’s safety plans “very carefully” to make sure all senators and “workers are protected in every way.” His comment came in response to a question pointing to a highly diverse workforce in Washington, DC — nearly 50% African American — many of whom work at the US Capitol in service jobs.
“We are going to scrutinize Leader McConnell’s plan very carefully to see if it does provide the needed protections for the staff and the workers who are here,” he said.
Schumer also reiterated Democrats’ call for prioritizing oversight hearings on the administration handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has left the country without widespread Covid-19 testing months into the crisis.
For her part, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the House’s current plan is to return the week after next to advance another coronavirus relief package.
“We’re not coming back next week,” Pelosi said during her weekly press conference. “Our plan is to come back the following week.”
But she also said the House is “at the mercy of the virus” and the schedule will depend on guidance from the Capitol attending physician and the sergeant at arms.
Ahead of the Senate’s return next week, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson talked to GOP senators during Thursday’s private GOP conference call about the current economic crisis and compared it to the 2008 financial crisis.
Republican Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana told CNN that Paulson said that going “too much further into a lockdown” could further cripple the economy. “He said there’s a window of opportunity to get the economy going,” Braun said. “He said at this stage, we could avoid some of the things that happened in 2008-2009.”
Braun said he asked Paulson about the skyrocketing deficit, and Paulson’s message was that “we gotta get through this pickle first” and then deal with the serious structural deficit problems.
In addition to concerns over bringing the Senate back into session, Democrats are also troubled by the expectation the Senate will move soon to confirm a young District Court judge from Kentucky — Justin Walker — to a seat on the powerful US Court of Appeals for the DC circuit, often considered the second most powerful court in the country.
Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote this week to Chairman Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, urging him to put off confirmation hearings and focus the committee’s attention on battling coronavirus, such as keeping law enforcement and corrections employees safe.
On the new charges from lawyers for former Trump National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn that the FBI might have acted improperly during their investigation into him, McConnell said “if all this proves to be true” you would have a “major error on the part of the top leadership of the FBI.”
Flynn’s attorneys made public on Wednesday a handwritten note from Bill Priestap, the then-counterintelligence director at the FBI, that mused how agents should approach a critical interview with Trump’s first national security adviser in the White House in January 2017.
Lawyers for Flynn, who pleaded guilty late in 2017 to lying to the FBI about conversations with Russia’s ambassador, said they believe the document along with others support their accusations of investigative misconduct. It’s now part of their effort in court to try to exonerate Flynn, and part of their public relations push for a presidential pardon for Flynn. While Flynn’s legal team has alleged the Justice Department and FBI wrongfully targeted Flynn, the Justice Department in court has defended the handling of the case.
McConnell, however, refused to weigh-in on whether Trump should pardon Flynn or if former FBI Director James Comey should be charged for his role in that matter.
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