“The vote today should have never happened. It was totally irresponsible to proceed before the Office of Special Counsel investigation was completed. To top it off, Senator Reid went to extraordinary steps to ensure Mr. Jones’ confirmation by holding the vote open for more than five hours while flying in a Senator from her home state where, according to news reports, she was apparently recovering from an illness," Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley in response to the confirmation. "It’s too bad that after the Obama administration left the position open for more than four years, a person who is alleged to have retaliated against a whistleblower is now the director of an agency that could use a lot more whistleblowers to help clean it up.”
During a confirmation hearing in June, Jones' faced tough questions about his history of intimidation, a lack of prosecutions for gun law violators and about the lack of accountability for those involved in Operation Fast and Furious.