Loretta Lynch is sworn in as attorney general
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Version 0 of 1. After months of delay by the Senate, Loretta E. Lynch was sworn in Monday morning as the 83rd attorney general, the first African American woman to serve as the nation’s top law enforcement official. With her husband at her side, along with her 83-year-old father, Lynch repeated the oath of office to Vice President Biden during a ceremony at the Justice Department. Among those in attendance were FBI Director James B. Comey and Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Obama. “It’s about time,” Biden said as the packed attorney general’s conference room erupted in applause. “It’s about time this woman is being sworn in. . . . This is a woman who is incredibly qualified.” In her remarks, Lynch thanked Biden for his support and counsel during the confirmation process. “And it’s been quite a process,” she said to laughter. [Senate votes to confirm Loretta Lynch as attorney general] Although Lynch was confirmed last week by a 56-to-43 vote, her nomination took more than five months to reach the Senate floor, with lawmakers repeatedly delaying the process. The nomination also became tangled in politics over legislation — specifically a human-trafficking bill — and when it would come to the floor. Lynch faces a host of challenges as she replaces Eric H. Holder Jr. as attorney general. The department is under increasing pressure to weigh in on excessive use of force by local police officers and is overseeing several closely watched civil rights investigations. After her swearing-in, Lynch met with Obama and updated him on several issues, including the events occurring in Baltimore after the funeral of Freddie Gray, the African American man who died while in police custody. The Gray case is under investigation by the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Although Lynch has voiced strong opposition to the legalization of marijuana, the department will also have to contend with a changing landscape across the country as several states take more relaxed positions. The Justice Department, meanwhile, is devoting increasing resources to tackling cybercrime and preventing cyberattacks. On Monday, Lynch, 55, who twice served as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, thanked her mother, Lorine Lynch, a school librarian, and her father, a fourth-generation Baptist minister who she said had traveled to Washington to be “at every hearing, every vote.” Her father, the Rev. Lorenzo Lynch, stood near her and held a Bible on which she swore the oath of office. [After forging her path from N.C. to Brooklyn, Lynch is poised to become attorney general] “I’m here to tell you, if a little girl from North Carolina — who used to tell her grandfather in the fields to lift her up on the back of his mule so she could ‘see way up high, Granddaddy’ — can grow up to become the chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America, we can do anything,” Lynch said. |