On the recordJanuary 13, 2022
That is my understanding. My understanding is that there may have been private advocacy or public speeches given but that there certainly wasn't the tactic used that had been used during 2020, which is extraordinary, the holding of all nominees. I think I would add to that that Democratic Senators have not used that tactic. We had huge disagreements with President Trump's policy, including his failure to use sanctions that were given to him by Congress to stop the pipeline at the moment when those sanctions would have been most effective, but we didn't block all of President Trump's Ambassadors and State Department personnel because we thought that it was better to have those people on hand, working to protect U.S. interests, than it was to have those positions vacant. That is the case we have been trying to make on this floor, that if you really care about helping Ukraine, why did Senator Cruz spend all of 2020 blocking the Ambassadors and State Department personnel whose job it would have been to help Ukraine? No one has been more engaged on this question and this fight than you have, Senator Shaheen.
