Tom Harkin: “the contentions made by the Senator are absolutely wrong. We had a hearing on this. We explored it in our committee.…”

“the contentions made by the Senator are absolutely wrong. We had a hearing on this. We explored it in our committee. Instead of the 1,200 e-mails they cite, we are talking about that over a 3\1/2\-year period there were 35 e-mails located on his personal emails that touched Department of Justice business and were not forwarded to the Department of Justice, and those have been looked at, and none of them demonstrate that he acted improperly or unethically. When they were discovered, the e-mails were immediately forwarded to the DOJ server and are now part of the DOJ record retention system. I might add that the 35 e-mails were made available to the House Oversight Committee staff prior to Mr. Perez's confirmation hearing, and the Senate HELP Committee staff have also been offered access to review all of those e-mails. The contentions made by the Senator from Florida are just absolutely wrong. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the nomination of Thomas Edward Perez, of Maryland, to be Secretary of Labor shall be brought to a close? The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule. The clerk will call the roll. The bill clerk called the roll. The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 60, nays 40, as follows: [Rollcall Vote No.…”