Top 100 Attorney General Quotes

As you may know, previously as Attorney General and now as Governor, I have supported legislation to close the gun show loophole in North Carolina.

As attorney general, I’ve launched a specialized unit to protect voting rights.

Attorney General Becerra was the leading force behind the lawsuit to protect the Affordable Care Act. Yes, he had the audacity to maintain protections for people with pre-existing conditions and for those suffering from mental illness.

Americans deserve an attorney general that will be honest with them, they deserve an attorney general who will uphold the basic standards of political independence and accountability.

When I was a young man, I used to dream maybe someday I could be an alderman. Instead of that I became an attorney general, a senator, a vice president, a Democratic nominee.

We need an attorney general for the people, not a presidential protector and puppet of the administration.

The responsibility of the attorney general is to change things and bring us closer to the ideals expressed in our founding documents.

It was hard to imagine a little boy who looked like me could someday help a president confirm a Supreme Court justice, or even run for attorney general. But here we are.

I was approached by friends who encouraged me to run for an open seat – attorney general of Michigan. It was a big risk.

In some states, the attorney general is appointed, but in New York state it’s an independently elected position. The New York attorney general has an obligation to the people first, to her conscience and to the rule of law, not to the governor, and not to the legislature.

Since my election as Oklahoma attorney general in 2010, I have been a proud member of a group of federalism-minded state attorneys general who have methodically, indeed relentlessly, worked to restore the proper balance of power between the federal government and the states.

I recognized when I ran for the office of attorney general that there would be… challenges and that there are things that you cannot predict.

The Attorney General is not above the law.

During my time as a judge, as a justice, and as attorney general, I’ve had one overarching goal, and that is a strict interpretation and application of the laws and the Constitution. I would be Madisonian.

I’ve given everything I’ve got as attorney general.

I know that Duke made a number of demands, including that the attorney general drop its investigation. We have no intention of asking the attorney general to do that.

Days after being sworn in as the nation’s top law enforcement officer, Trump’s attorney general, the virulently anti-LGBTQ Jeff Sessions, revoked lifesaving guidance promoting the protection and dignity of transgender students.

It is no secret that I believe my son, Attorney General Beau Biden would make a great United States Senator – just as I believe he has been a great Attorney General. But Beau has made it clear from the moment he entered public life, that any office he sought, he would earn on his own.

I do want to make clear that I am personally committed to the integrity of the Department of Justice. Since becoming acting attorney general, I have run the department to the best of my ability, with fidelity to the law and to the Constitution.

The attorney general should be a watchdog for the rule of law, not a lapdog for the president – simple as that.

Though the Attorney General of the United States carries many responsibilities and undertakes many tasks, there can be none more important than the pursuit of civil rights on behalf of all the people of this country.

To criticize the attorney general for permitting justice to be done without regard to political party is very disturbing.

The Attorney General is the state’s chief consumer advocate, fighting to protect the financial security of all Illinoisans.

Mr. Gonzales’ failure to respond to questions legitimately posed to him by the Senate raises grave doubts in my mind as to his fitness to serve the people of the United States as their Attorney General.

No cabinet official has delivered on Donald Trump’s key campaign promises more resoundingly than Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

At the end of the day, you realize that this is important stuff, but it isn’t as important as how my kids feel about me. That’s how I’m going to measure my success – not how I did as counsel to the president or as attorney general. How did I do as a dad?

William Barr has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate four times, has served two U.S. presidents, and has proven himself to be a consummate professional who deeply respects the great responsibilities and boundaries of the office of the attorney general.

I have always wanted to run for Attorney General, and I always wanted to have a baby, but I did not think I would be doing them at the same time.

I hope I will be a good Attorney General, but one of the things that will be as important to me is to know that I made a commitment to my family and honored it, a commitment that has been repaid 10,000 times over.

Shame on Congressman Brooks for his lack of faith in President Trump’s and Attorney General Sessions’ commitment to work together to make America great again.

As attorney general, I would work with my colleagues in other states to launch a major antitrust investigation to look into the ways in which Facebook and Google are wielding and may be abusing their duopoly powers.

I agree with President Obama and Attorney General Holder that we need to reform our criminal sentencing laws.

We need an attorney general that’s going to be an advocate for the state of Missouri and is willing to intervene in the regulatory process and go to court to protect Missourians from over-regulation.

As a past attorney general I consider a WTO Brexit to be a disaster for us as, leaving aside the economic damage it will cause, it would trash our reputation for observing our international obligations – as it must lead to our breaching the Good Friday Agreement with Ireland on the Irish border.

If I were attorney general in Kansas in 1953, I would not have defended a Kansas statute that put in place separate-but-equal facilities.

You get a lawyer whether you’re in a military tribunal or whether you’re in a federal court, number one. The attorney general decided that the court with the biggest – with the greatest venue, with the best jurisdiction was the New York court. That was the right decision to make.

The idea that the special counsel regulations, which were written to provide the public with confidence against a coverup, would empower an attorney general to restrict disclosure in an investigation of the president is a nonstarter.

While I’m the Attorney General, we will address each issue with one question: What’s the right thing to do?

June 10, 2002, the day John Ashcroft announced the arrest of Jose Padilla, marked a low point in Ashcroft’s career as Attorney General.

When I first served as Attorney General back in the early 90s, crime was at its highest in American history, with its peak in 1992.

We should never again have an attorney general capable of saying virtually nothing as the law of major intelligence programs and the integrity of his department’s work in overseeing these programs are assailed over a protracted period of time.

I am humbled to have been asked by President-elect Trump to serve as Attorney General of the United States.

I couldn’t vote to confirm any candidate who supports executive amnesty. The attorney general is a top law enforcement officer in this country – the senior person – and anyone who occupies that office must have fidelity to the laws of the United States duly passed, and to the Constitution of the United States.

In the 1950s, the black men and women and their white allies who fought for civil rights and basic human dignity could look to the federal government. If the racist sheriff and his troops beat them with batons or sprayed them and their children with water cannons, the attorney general would act.

Before I was elected to Congress, I helped to create the public corruption unit in the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. Unfortunately, business was good. Among the usual suspects were government contracts steered to insiders – leaving Illinois taxpayers holding the bag.

108 members of congress have signed onto my Resolution of No Confidence in Attorney General Holder as a first step towards recognizing that he must be held accountable for the actions of his department and for his personal unwillingness to cooperate with congressional oversight requests.

It simply cannot be that the president can name his own temporary attorney general to supervise an investigation in which he and his family have a direct, concrete interest.

As Attorney General, my most important responsibility is keeping New Yorkers safe by enforcing the laws that protect our people from harm. But another fundamental part of my job is to seek to advance the basic American principle of equal justice under law.

I explained to the president that I’ve been pleased with my conversations with the Attorney General and Civil Rights Division regarding their helpful understanding that they aren’t taking over this investigation, but are conducting a parallel review of the events that led to Michael Brown’s death.