Obama’s Attorney General Nominee Wants to Jump Back Into the Drug War

As the confirmation hearing for President Obama's new attorney genera nominee Loretta Lynch opened on Wednesday, Texas Republican Senator summed up Republican views with one question: "You are not Eric Holder, are you?"

Lynch assured the room of senators that, no, in fact, she is not Holder, and that she does not intend to follow in his footsteps. Relations between Republicans in Congress and the outgoing attorney general have oscillated from icy to outright hostile, culminating with the House voting to hold Holder in criminal contempt of Congress in 2012. S

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley hinted at this deep enmity in his opening statement Wednesday. "Over the last few years, public confidence in the Department's ability to do its job without regard to politics has been shaken, with good reason," he said.

In hours of testimony and pointed questions of Republican senators, Lynch has sought, to assure Republicans that things will be different under her watch, casting herself as an independent, professional lawyer. A federal prosecutor for New York's Eastern District, Lynch was appointed twice by the Senate for other positions, and is generally respected on both sides of the aisle. If confirmed, she will be the first black female attorney general in US history and the first US attorney to hold the position since the 19th century.

"I look forward to fostering a new and improved relationship with this committee, the United States Senate, and the entire United States Congress — a relationship based on mutual respect and constitutional balance," Lynch said in her opening statement.

On the question of marijuana prohibition, in particular, Lynch made it clear that she would not follow in her predecessor's footsteps. While Holder has taken baby steps to pull back on America's endless War on Drugs, the Justice Department's hands-off approach to state legalization laws has angered law-and-order conservatives and created dissent within the top echelons of the DEA.

In her testimony, Lynch suggested she would undo some of those policies. Asked if she agreed with President Obama when he said, in a 2014 interview with The New Yorker, that alcohol is more dangerous than weed, she took a surprisingly hard line.

"I certainly don't hold that view and don't agree with that view of marijuana," she said. "I certainly think the president was speaking from his personal experience, personal opinion … neither of which I am able to share."

"I can tell you that not only do I not support the legalization of marijuana, it is not the position of the Department of Justice currently to support the legalization," Lynch continued. "Nor will it be the position should I be confirmed as attorney general."

Lynch also broke with the administration's new position on civil asset forfeiture, calling the practice—which allows to seize citizens' property if its suspected of being connected to criminal activity, and which has been a source of funding for the Drug War—a "wonderful tool." The Wall Street Journal reported that as a US attorney, Lynch has used civil asset forfeiture in more than 120 cases, seizing some $113 million in assets.

Earlier this month, Holder announced he was curtailing the Justice Department's Equitable Sharing Program, which funnels hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds from seized assets to police departments across the country. In the past year, news investigations have uncovered huge abuses of asset forfeiture laws—situations where police seized cash, cars, and even houses from people who were not charged with any crime. Civil liberties advocates argue that perverse incentives and lax safeguards have turned asset forfeiture—a tool originally aimed to combat drug trafficking—into a form of state-sanctioned robbery

Of course, it's not totally surprising that a federal prosecutor opposes weed legalization and thinks it's just swell that the feds can seize people's property without charging them with a crime. But it's the kind of comforting, reliable rhetoric that hardline Republicans in the Senate like to hear. Lynch did not comment on whether she would reverse the Obama administration's hands-off approach to state legalization, or attempt to reinstate civil asset forfeiture programs that Holder is trying to phase out. But her hardline remarks are a reminder that even the modest steps Obama has taken to ease off the Drug War can be easily reversed.