Eric Holder will likely have to wait a week before the Senate confirms his place as the next Attorney General.

Republican leaders today urged a delay because they’re worried Holder will use his position to prosecute interrogators accused of torturing detainees. Holder caused a bit of a frenzy last week when he said that, yes, waterboarding counts as torture, an admission Bush officials refused to make. With that confirmation, however, Holder now has the GOP worried he’ll start prosecutions. Thus, John Cornyn, the Republican Senator who’s also holding up Hillary Clinton’s confirmation, refuses to proceed until Holder says whether or not he would prosecute intelligence officials:

It could well be there will be a request to delay the markup for a week so those questions can be asked and answered. Part of my concern relates to his statements at the hearing with regard to torture and what his intentions are toward our intelligence personnel who were operating in good faith based on their understanding of what the law was.

Cornyn and his colleagues hope that Holder will go easy on people who were following orders and thought their actions fell within the lines of the law. For example, how people thought — or think — waterboarding’s an acceptable interrogation method.