Support of Reynolds Elicits Warning From Democrats

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said Tuesday there is support for reviving a Justice Department promotion for William Bradford Reynolds, but Democrats warned President Reagan against making a recess appointment.

Senate Democratic leader Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia said any effort to appoint Reynolds to the No. 3 Justice Department job when Congress recesses in August “would be an insult to the Senate and an affront to the Constitution.”

At the urging of the Democratic Policy Committee, Byrd sent a letter to Reagan warning that “a recess appointment . . . would be inappropriate and unacceptable. We urge you not to make this recess appointment.”

Procedure Seldom Used

White House spokesman Larry Speakes said the Administration is “looking at all options,” but said any action on a recess appointment would have to await a decision by the President.

Under a little-used procedure of naming a presidential appointee while Congress is in recess, Reynolds could serve as associate attorney general without confirmation for the remainder of the 99th Congress, which runs through 1986.

One Republican source, speaking only on condition he not be identified, said that politically, an interim appointment “would be a disaster” because Reynolds was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“You might get Reynolds, but that’s all you would get. All other nominations would come to a screeching halt, and it would affect other Senate business,” the source said.

Rejected by Committee

Reynolds, who has headed the department’s civil rights division for four years, was nominated for the promotion but rejected by the committee after charges he misled the Senate in sworn testimony and has declined to enforce civil rights laws in his present post.

Under Senate procedures, the full Senate could consider the Reynolds nomination if it gets a majority vote to dislodge it from the committee, a move that Dole said he is now considering.

Dole said there was “widespread support” among Republicans to try to resurrect the Reynolds nomination. “I think it is an affront to the Senate not to let it come to the floor,” Dole said.