A new leader will helm the federal investigation into Mississippi’s $77-million welfare scandal after the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Todd Gee as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi on Friday, Sept. 29.
The office has not had a permanent leader since U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst, a Donald Trump appointee, stepped down in 2021, leaving Interim U.S. Attorney Darren LaMarca in charge. President Joe Biden nominated Gee in September 2022, but procedural delays prevented him from getting a vote for a year.
It took until April 2023 for U.S Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith to join fellow Mississippi Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker in returning a blue slip on Gee, following a Senate tradition that allows home-state senators to either endorse a nominee with a blue slip or block them by withholding support.
But in June, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican, vowed to block Gee and other Biden Justice Department nominees in protest of criminal cases the department is pursuing against Trump.
“I’ve announced today that I will be holding all Department of Justice nominees that (U.S. Attorney General) Merrick Garland will use—if confirmed—not to enforce the law impartially, which is his duty, but clearly to harass his political opponents,” Vance said in a Twitter video in June. Despite Vance’s assertions, though, Garland is not directly in charge of the Trump prosecutions; he turned those investigations over to Special Counsel Jack Smith long before any indictments were made.
The halt on the Justice Department nominations drew a sharp rebuke from Senate Democrats.
“I rise today to speak about the critical role that U.S. Attorneys play in keeping America safe from the scourge of drugs—like opioids, fentanyl—gun violence, and violent crime. Why are we on the floor? We’re on the floor because one Senator has decided to stop the appointment of the United States Attorneys for the Department of Justice across the United States,” U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said on Sept. 27.
The Senate ultimately held a roll call vote, at Vance’s insistence, on the nominations on Sept. 29. Traditionally, the Senate has