The Obscure Lawyer Who Might Become the Most Powerful Woman in Washington
If the deputy attorney general resigns or gets fired, oversight of the Trump-Russia investigation would fall to the Justice Department’s No. 3, Rachel Brand.
By Philip Shenon
June 16, 2017
For someone on the job barely a month, Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand was already facing plenty of incoming fire from her critics. Her big problem now: Her ultimate boss, President Donald Trump, could soon be among them.
Senate Democrats who opposed her nomination to the No. 3 job at the Justice Department said her legal career reflected a tendency always to support Big Business against the little guy, and they questioned her commitment to civil liberties during her years in the department under President George W. Bush. She has a “heavily skewed pro-corporate agenda,” said Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat. The 44-year-old Brand was confirmed to her job on a party-line Senate vote of 52 to 46. Compare that to the overwhelmingly bipartisan 94 to 6 vote for the No. 2 official in the department, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
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http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/16/justice-department-rachel-brand-215270
