Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) gave a passionate speech to the House of Representatives floor Monday outlining examples of times that Democrat Senators attacked judges during their confirmation hearings for simply being conservative. His speech comes just two days after President Donald Trump nominated federal judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Roy, who served as a lawyer on the Senate Judiciary Committee for five years, claimed that the confirmation hearings of federal and Supreme Court judges Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen, Clarence Thomas, Miguel Estrada, Robert Bork, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh were “complete horror shows” and an “utter disgrace.”
“It wasn’t just highlighting differences of views or judicial philosophy. It was targeting, personally, and attacking,” Roy said. “That is the playbook that I have to suggest is the routine playbook for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle in the United States Senate.”
I was a lawyer on the @senjudiciary for 5-years. One of the issues I worked on was nominations.
You want an inside look at the @SenateDems playbook to tarnish GOP nominees?
Here are 4 stories you need to know. pic.twitter.com/q5VOKwtnCs
— Rep. Chip Roy Press Office (@RepChipRoy) September 28, 2020
While Roy said all of these nominees were upstanding judges with good records and ready to serve the American public, Senate Democrats found ways to disparage their character, attack their beliefs, and discount them, some of them women and minorities, because of their ideological positions and even, in Estrada’s case, his ethnicity.
“‘We can’t have those dastardly Republicans appointing someone who doesn’t fit the narrative by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle,'” Roy said, mocking the Democrats’ hypocrisy. “But, yes, that’s precisely what happened.”
“Miguel Estrada was targeted and stopped precisely because he is Hispanic,” Roy said, explaining that a leaked memo from Democratic Senators claimed Estrada shouldn’t be confirmed because “he’s Hispanic.”
While Roy acknowledged that many of these judges went on to be “excellent” at fulfilling their duties, he warned that that the Democrats would not stop trying to discount conservative judges from serving in the courts.
“That is what your Democrats in the United States Senate did. Attacking them, tearing them down, blowing up the very process that people are talking about right now, the confirmation process,” Roy said.
“Ladies and gentlemen, who are watching this, this is what is wrong with Washington DC,” he added.
