Loretta Lynch’s Mission to Convince Congress She’s Not Eric Holder Is Working. So Far.

Lor­etta Lynch had one job in the first round of her con­firm­a­tion hear­ings to be Amer­ica’s top law­yer Wed­nes­day: Con­vince con­gres­sion­al Re­pub­lic­ans she is noth­ing like Eric Hold­er, who would be her pre­de­cessor if she be­comes at­tor­ney gen­er­al. So far, she’s mak­ing a strong case to the Re­pub­lic­ans she has to win over.

In her open­ing state­ment, Lynch con­fron­ted the frayed re­la­tion­ship with Con­gress that has evolved dur­ing Hold­er’s ten­ure head-on as she as­sured mem­bers that a top pri­or­ity was “fos­ter­ing a new and im­proved re­la­tion­ship with this com­mit­tee,” a re­la­tion­ship “based on mu­tu­al re­spect and con­sti­tu­tion­al bal­ance.”

That, however, didn’t keep Re­pub­lic­ans from voicing skep­ti­cism and hold­ing her out as a scape­goat for their frus­tra­tions with the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion. From Pres­id­ent Obama’s ac­tions on im­mig­ra­tion to the IRS’s al­leged tar­get­ing of con­ser­vat­ive groups seek­ing non­profit status, Re­pub­lic­ans wanted to know if Lynch had any­thing in com­mon with the man she’d be suc­ceed­ing.

“You’re not Eric Hold­er, are you?” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, asked dur­ing his line of ques­tion­ing.

Re­pub­lic­an Sen. Or­rin Hatch of Utah asked Lynch if she would prom­ise to de­fend the Con­sti­tu­tion even if it put her at odds with the pres­id­ent she was serving.

“Ab­so­lutely, sir,” she re­spon­ded, and Hatch chimed in: “I’m glad you said that. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Hold­er answered that same ques­tion in the same way.”

“By break­ing his prom­ise, he cast doubt about oth­ers who make the same com­mit­ment as you did today,” Hatch said.

Sev­er­al Re­pub­lic­ans who star­ted the day un­sure about Lynch, however, emerged from the hear­ing Wed­nes­day ap­plaud­ing her per­form­ance.

“She’s been say­ing all the right things. I think she comes from a back­ground of be­ing a pro­sec­utor who was on the front lines, and that gives me some hope that she will be in­de­pend­ent,” Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham, who en­gaged in a par­tic­u­larly tough line of ques­tion­ing with Lynch, told Na­tion­al Journ­al. “I’m im­pressed. She has done noth­ing to talk me out of sup­port­ing her.”

Ju­di­ciary Com­mit­tee Chair­man Chuck Grass­ley, a hard-liner who has pledged to re­in­vestig­ate Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion scan­dals such as Fast and Furi­ous, offered care­ful praise for Lynch’s abil­ity to make it through long lines of ques­tion­ing.

“I’m gonna wait and read the whole re­cord, in­clud­ing ana­lys­is of people testi­fy­ing to­mor­row for and against her,” Grass­ley said. “She’s a very good law­yer. She is hand­ling her­self well, but I don’t want to make any fi­nal judg­ment.”

Al­though Lynch en­dured plenty of grilling Wed­nes­day, her tough­er chal­lenge may come Thursday when a series of wit­nesses test­i­fies against her.

The list of wit­nesses looks like a roster of Hold­er’s top crit­ics. At the top of the list: Sharyl At­tkisson, an in­vest­ig­at­ive journ­al­ist who dog­gedly re­por­ted stor­ies about Fast and Furi­ous and is su­ing the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion for al­legedly spy­ing on her as she in­vest­ig­ated Hold­er’s role in the gun-walk­ing scan­dal; and Dav­id Clarke, the Mil­wau­kee sher­iff, Second Amend­ment ad­voc­ate, and some­times pun­dit who called on of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Hold­er, to apo­lo­gize in Au­gust for “in­sinu­at­ing that our law-en­force­ment of­ficers across the United States en­gage in some ne­far­i­ous or sys­tem­at­ic and cul­tur­al at­tempts to vi­ol­ate people’s civil rights” as Hold­er tried to nav­ig­ate con­tro­versy in Fer­guson, Mo.

Then there is Cath­er­ine En­gel­brecht, pres­id­ent of True the Vote, who has been an out­spoken op­pon­ent of calls by Hold­er to patch the Vot­ing Rights Act back to­geth­er after the Su­preme Court struck down some key pro­vi­sions.

Throughout the first day of her hear­ing, Lynch’s tone was firm but con­cili­at­ory as she at­temp­ted to nav­ig­ate the tangled polit­ic­al leg­acy Hold­er will be leav­ing at the Justice De­part­ment. Sen. Richard Blu­menth­al, D-Conn., said that in dis­cus­sions with his Re­pub­lic­an col­leagues, Lynch’s grace un­der pres­sure had made an im­pres­sion.

“It was about as ac­com­plished and adroit of a wit­ness as I have seen in my four years. … They thought she was dy­nam­ite.” Blu­menth­al said. “The ones I talked to were lean­ing in her fa­vor.”

Of course, there were still some Lynch couldn’t win over.

Sen. Dav­id Vit­ter, R-La., noted dur­ing the hear­ing he was dis­ap­poin­ted with Lynch’s po­s­i­tion that the pres­id­ent was with­in his leg­al bounds of pro­sec­utori­al dis­cre­tion when he an­nounced he would al­low mil­lions of im­mig­rants to stay in the United States even though they came here il­leg­ally.

“I thought the opin­ion was reas­on­able,” Lynch said dur­ing the hear­ing.

Sen. Jeff Ses­sions, R-Ala., says he has ser­i­ous doubts that Lynch has the abil­ity or the will­ing­ness to block the pres­id­ent and side with Con­gress.

“We’ve heard this be­fore, and we have the most politi­cized De­part­ment of Justice ever,” Ses­sions told Na­tion­al Journ­al. “I have not said what I would do, but I am at this point very troubled.”

While Hold­er pushed pro­gress on civil rights, he of­ten moved for­ward as the GOP screeched about over­reach. In 2011, he called the De­fense of Mar­riage Act un­con­sti­tu­tion­al and made it clear he’d no longer de­fend it in the courts. Un­der his com­mand, DOJ chal­lenged a lit­any of voter ID cases and made strides to re­form the crim­in­al justice sys­tem. Hold­er gave speeches de­cry­ing the stark in­equal­ity that ex­ists between blacks and whites who go through the sys­tem and he has pushed to re­store vot­ing rights to former felons. All of that, Ses­sions ar­gued, is an ex­ample of DOJ be­ing used for polit­ic­al pur­poses.

Hold­er’s leg­acy — his com­bat­ive nature in hear­ings, his un­will­ing­ness to turn over doc­u­ments, which landed him in con­tempt of Con­gress in the House — all weighed heav­ily on Lynch’s hear­ing.

Demo­crats as­sailed Re­pub­lic­ans for us­ing the hear­ing to seek re­pu­di­ation of the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“The con­firm­a­tion of Amer­ica’s highest-rank­ing law-en­force­ment agent is not the time or place to vent frus­tra­tion,” Sen. Chuck Schu­mer, D-N.Y., said at the hear­ing.

Sen. Di­anne Fein­stein, D-Cal­if., said that if any­one had made it clear she was will­ing to as­sert her­self when she needed to against the ad­min­is­tra­tion, it was Lor­etta Lynch.

It was clear, Fein­stein said, that Lynch “was go­ing to be an in­de­pend­ent in­di­vidu­al who was go­ing to be an in­de­pend­ent at­tor­ney gen­er­al.”

“She made the best in­tro­duct­ory re­marks of any pro­spect­ive at­tor­ney gen­er­al I have heard in de­fin­ing pre­cisely what the role is,” Fein­stein said.