Blame Cory Gardner. Democrats have been doing that for a while, but now U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is down on the senator from Colorado, claiming the fellow Republican is using pot to trip up the Justice Department. On Tuesday Gardner wasn’t backing down.

Gardner is blocking Trump nominees over Sessions’ decision in January to rescind protections for the marijuana industry in states that have legalized and regulated pot.

“Sen. Gardner’s holds on Justice nominees remain in place as he and our staff continue to talk with the Department of Justice and discuss a path forward which recognizes Colorado’s state’s rights and ensures law enforcement has the authority and tools needed to protect our communities,” Gardner spokesman Casey Contres. “These discussions continue to be necessary and we appreciate their willingness to have them. Sen. Gardner is also working with a bipartisan group of senators from across the political spectrum and they continue to look at ways Congress can take action to preserve states’ rights. Sen. Gardner appreciates the positive conversations he continues to have with Department of Justice and they will continue.”

Sessions told a law enforcement conference in Washington on Monday that Gardner is the reason why the administration still hasn’t filled important jobs, including justice officials in charge of national security and the department’s criminal and civil rights divisions.

“These are critically important components,” Sessions told the National Sheriff’s Association. “… But because right now one senator’s concerns over unrelated issues – like reversing federal law against marijuana – we can’t even get a vote.”

Sessions added, “I’m attorney general of the United States. I don’t have the authority to say that something is legal when it is illegal, even if I wanted to. I cannot and will not pretend that a duly enacted law of this country – like the federal ban on marijuana – does not exist. Marijuana is illegal in the United States-even in Colorado, California, and everywhere else in America.”

Read the full text of the address by clicking here.

Trump’s inability to fill vacancies and confirm nominees has been unusual, given the GOP control of the executive and legislative branches.

The Associated Press noted on Monday, however, that many of the Justice Department slots were open for months before Gardner’s standoff began in January. Gardner has worked alongside Colorado’s Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Denver to defend the industry, including banking support.

Gardner is chief among the Colorado leaders who have called foul and suggested Sessions is bluffing, including Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper and Republican Attorney General Cynthia Coffman.

Hickenlooper said shutting down the industry in the state is logistically unrealistic, that the Justice Department doesn’t have the manpower or the budget to raid otherwise-legal businesses, then take on the massively expensive litigation against a thriving industry with an army of employees.

The question, ultimately, is likely to come down to whether Colorado regulates marijuana tightly enough to satisfy the attorney general, who has a long history of opposing marijuana, illegal or otherwise.

The National Fraternal Order of Police, however, sides with Sessions.

“Sen. Gardner has come out swinging to defend the pot industry in his state,” the police union’s president, Chuck Canterbury, said in a statement two weeks ago. “However, the fact that he believes Colorado can profit from the sale of this illegal drug does not give him the right to hold up or delay the appointment of critical personnel at the Justice Department. … Sen. Gardner does a real disservice to the nation as a whole, and we urgently ask him to reconsider his rash and ill-advised obstructionism.”

Sales of recreational and medical marijuana topped $1.5 billion in Colorado last year, up from $1.3 billion in 2016 and $996 million in 2015, the Department of Revenue reported this month.

Colorado voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2012.

In October 2016 the pro-industry Marijuana Policy Group released a report that indicated marijuana has eclipsed oil and gas as the state’s chief industry, estimating pot’s total economic impact on the state at nearly $2.4 billion in 2015.