Gardner had been blocking all nominees to the department after Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded an Obama-era rule, known as the Cole Memo, that gave U.S. attorneys guidelines in deciding how to treat state marijuana laws, prioritizing prosecutions on actions such as providing marijuana to minors.<\/p>\n \u201cLet me be crystal clear: So long as the federal enforcement priorities detailed in the 2013 Cole Memorandum are adequately protected, the DOJ should respect the will of the states who have spoken overwhelmingly on this issue,\u201d Gardner said in a news release. \u201cI will view the DOJ\u2019s failure to do so as a direct contradiction of our positive conversations and will take action accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n During Sessions\u2019 testimony at his confirmation hearing, he promised Gardner that he would protect the states\u2019 rights to decide marijuana laws. When Sessions decided to overturn the memo, Gardner viewed it as a violation of states\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n During the past two weeks, Gardner met with the attorney general and deputy attorney general. Gardner said he has received assurances that made him feel comfortable making a limited release of blocked nominees. He didn\u2019t discuss what assurances he received.<\/p>\n He said he will continue to block some nominees until he feels the Justice Department has met the assurances he received.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had very good, positive conversations about protecting states\u2019 rights and protecting the voters of Colorado\u2019s wishes,\u201d Gardner said.<\/p>\n Andrew Eversden is an intern for The Durango Herald and a student at American University in Washington, D.C.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Colorado Republican releases holds on some Justice Department nominees<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,135,24],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-76699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-marijuana","tag-u-s-sen-cory-gardner"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76699"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=76699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}