Orrin Hatch: “The Senator is correct, in both Democratic control of the committee and Republican control of the committee. There are…”

“The Senator is correct, in both Democratic control of the committee and Republican control of the committee. There are many reasons. The reason may be because of failure to consult. It may be because of further investigations that have to be conducted. It may be further FBI investigations have to be conducted. It may be because of lack of time. It may be because of holds on the Senate floor, which have been used by both sides through time. But I can tell you this. There were less holdovers at the end of my tenure as chairman of the committee than there were in 1992, at the end of the Democrats' tenure when there was a Republican President. Let me add one last thing to that, and that is none of us complained, to my knowledge, about Senator Biden as chairman when there were 54 holdovers and 97 vacancies. We had 41 holdovers, and nine of those were put up so late there was no way I could have gotten to them in the remaining few weeks we had. So there were really only 32 holdovers and there were a number of those for which there were justifiable reasons for not bringing them up.”