Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel faced difficult questions Wednesday about his handling of the police shooting of a Chicago teenager, but a Senate panel appeared eager to approve his nomination to serve as President Biden’s ambassador to Japan.

Emanuel, a consummate Democratic insider and former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, conceded that he could have done more to remedy the “distrust” among Chicago’s Black residents during his mayorship and said he remains troubled by the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

“There’s not a day or a week that has gone by in the last seven years I haven’t thought about this,” he told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The confirmation hearing took place on the seven-year anniversary of the police shooting, which resulted in the firings of police officers and a federal probe. The delayed release of dashboard-camera video of the shooting after Emanuel won his second term for mayor — 13 months after the incident — led to accusations of a coverup.

But most Democrats on the panel, as well as some Republicans, suggested that the matter should not prevent Emanuel from obtaining the coveted diplomatic post.

“You can’t be a mayor, especially in a city like Chicago, without picking up some scar tissue on the way,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said. “Your description of what you learned along the way . . . those lessons were challenging and painful for you during your entire tenure, but you served in an admirable way.”

In an early display of diplomatic dealmaking, Emanuel secured an introduction at the hearing from Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), who urged members of both parties to support the nomination. Emanuel also received positive remarks from several Democrats and the top Republican on the committee, Sen. James E. Risch (Idaho).

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) stuck out among lawmakers for peppering Emanuel with questions and expressing skepticism over his claims that the reason he didn’t move to release the dash-cam footage sooner was to avoid prejudicing the legal proceedings.

“The mother of Laquan McDonald learned about the nature of the shooting when she was called by the funeral house who said to her, ’Do you realize your son was shot multiple times, his body was riddled with bullets?’ She didn’t know . . . that information hadn’t been shared with her,” Merkley said.

“It seems hard to believe that all those things happened and yet you were never briefed on the details of the situation when you were leading the city,” he added.

Emanuel noted that his nomination came with the support of the leadership of the Chicago Black Caucus and the great uncle of McDonald.

“This is a tragedy that happened,” Emanuel said. “No city of any size has not confronted the gulf and the gap that exists between police practices and the oversight and accountability. I made efforts. . . . They missed the mark because they totally missed how deep that distrust is.”

The largely cordial atmosphere during the hearing stood in contrast to the opposition Emanuel’s nomination faced among progressive lawmakers in the House, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who called the appointment “deeply shameful.”

A number of the panel’s most liberal members did not attend to question Emanuel, including Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). It was unclear why.

Earlier in the day, the Senate panel also examined the nomination of Biden’s nominee for ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns.

The career diplomat and former ambassador to NATO also won bipartisan praise as he conveyed his preference for a tough policy on China.

Burns accused Beijing of “stonewalling” the international community about the origins of covid-19, saying it needs to be more transparent about the virus. “We need to push the Chinese to come clean about what happened,” he said.

Burns also said China’s “genocide in Xinjiang” and aggressive actions toward Taiwan must stop. China rejects the U.S. government’s view that its campaign of mass detention and sterilization of Uyghur Muslims amounts to genocide.