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WASHINGTON, April 17 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday said the Senate's delay in confirming Loretta Lynch as attorney general is a "crazy situation" and is "embarrassing." During a joint press conference with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Obama urged the Senate to finalize Lynch's confirmation more than five months after she was first nominated.
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"What we still have is this crazy situation where a woman who everybody agrees is qualified... has been now sitting there for longer than the previous seven attorney generals combined," he said. "And there's no reason for it. Nobody can describe a reason for it beyond political gamesmanship in the Senate.
"There are times where the dysfunction in the Senate just goes too far. This is an example of it. It's gone too far. Enough," Obama said. "This is embarrassing -- a process like this."
The confirmation has been held up by the Senate a number of times. First, Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, threatened to block her in November since so many members of the 113th Congress had lost their seats in the recent election.
It's no secret that Republican senators are on the fence about Lynch; many wanted her to disapprove of Obama's executive action on immigration.
Her nomination then was held up by an anti-abortion provision in a human-trafficking bill in March.
"We have to finish the human-trafficking bill," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on CNN's State of the Union at the time. "The Loretta Lynch nomination comes next."
"It sounds like you are threatening to hold up Loretta Lynch, who has been in limbo for months and months," CNN host Dana Bash said.
"It's not a threat," McConnell said. "We need to finish this human-trafficking bill that came out of the Judiciary Committee unanimously."
Going against his fellow Republicans, though, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on Thursday urged Lynch's confirmation.
"I think presidents have the right to pick their team," he said during a town hall forum in Concord, N.H. "If someone is supportive of the president's policies, whether you agree with them or not, there should be some deference to the executive. It should not always be partisan."
Bush took the opportunity to make a jab at current Attorney General Eric Holder at the same time.
"The longer it takes to confirm her, the longer Eric Holder stays as attorney general, look at it that way," Bush said.
As of this week, Lynch's nomination was still stalled over the abortion debate.
Lynch, who was first appointed as U.S. attorney by President Clinton in 2000 and again by Obama in 2010, would be the second woman, and first African-American woman to hold the attorney general job.
In 2010, she was confirmed in the Senate by voice vote, meaning her nomination was uncontroversial. She is known for her successful prosecution in 1997 of a white police officer who sodomized Haitian immigrant Abner Louima with a broken broomstick, a case that became a symbol of police brutality.
In her role as U.S. attorney, she oversees cases in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island, including many terrorism cases that have given her experience dealing with matters of national security. She also chairs the Attorney General's Advisory Committee, a group of U.S. Attorneys who advise the attorney general.
