My client will be the United States, and my role will be to serve the public interest and the interest of justice, representing that client as best I can. That’s a role I’m very comfortable with.
Brand appeared Tuesday alongside Rod Rosenstein, the U.S. attorney for Maryland, who has been nominated for deputy attorney general. A week after Sessions announced he would recuse himself from investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, much of the questioning at the hearing centered on whether Rosenstein would appoint a special counsel to oversee the probe.
Rosenstein, who has served as Maryland’s top prosecutor under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, said he was “not aware” of any reason why he would not be able to supervise the investigation.
In their questioning of Brand, some senators turned to the future of federal regulation.
Brand’s ascendance to the No. 3 role at DOJ would come as the Trump administration pushes a wide-scale rollback of federal regulation that the president’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, recently described as the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”
Since taking office, Trump has ordered agencies to cut two existing regulations for every new rule to offset costs for businesses. In a separate executive order, he directed agencies to establish task forces to eliminate regulations.
“Through executive orders and congressional repeals, President Trump and his allies are taking unprecedented steps to help big business but harm average Americans,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Feinstein said Tuesday that many of the rules required by the Dodd-Frank financial reforms have not been finalized or implemented in the seven years since the post-crisis law was enacted. Two Venable partners who have long criticized the financial reform laws recently took posts in the White House.
“It is concerning to me that these rules may not be proposed or finalized at all under the regulatory position of this administration simply because there aren’t hundreds of others found to offset,” she said.
“What is the legal justification for arbitrarily failing to issue a regulation called for under law simply because there aren’t two regulations on the books to eliminate?”
Brand said she was aware of Trump’s executive orders “generally.” But, she said, “I haven’t studied them as I’m not yet in the department.”
“Any regulatory action taken by any agency of the government has to comply with the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act, which require reasoned decision-making. That statute remains in place,” Brand said.
“As to the interplay of the APA and the executive, those decisions would fall in the first instance to the regulatory agencies themselves, but I’d have to study it further,” she said.
Many challenges to Obama-era federal agency rules and regulations are tied up in courts, U.S. Chamber’s chief executive, Thomas Donohue, noted recently in a blog post.
“As a result of aggressive engagement by the business community and its allies, many of these rules have been temporarily or permanently enjoined by the courts,” Donohue wrote. “And with a new administration, there’s an opportunity to withdraw or modify those rules.”
This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.
To view this content, please continue to their sites.
Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law are third party online distributors of the broad collection of current and archived versions of ALM's legal news publications. LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law customers are able to access and use ALM's content, including content from the National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, Legaltech News, The New York Law Journal, and Corporate Counsel, as well as other sources of legal information.
For questions call 1-877-256-2472 or contact us at [email protected]
