Mary Ellen Bork, the widow to the late federal Judge Robert Bork, wrote a response to an article in the Wall Street Journal reminding readers of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s role in her husband’s failed confirmation to the Supreme Court.
“Most people don’t remember the hearings on Robert Bork for nomination to the Supreme Court, but I do,” she wrote. “The week of hearings in 1987 showed me Joe Biden’s partisanship and pragmatism.”
President Ronald Reagan nominated Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987, but he was not confirmed. The Senate rejected his nomination in a failed vote of 42–58.
Mary Ellen Bork explained in her letter that this rejection was due to “vicious political campaigning” against her “Bob” led by “then-Sen. Biden who presided over a rigged hearing full of an unprecedented level of lying and distortion of a man known for his integrity and judicial wisdom.”
The original article in the Wall Street Journal states, “This began the modern era of hyper-politicized judicial nominations, though for the Supreme Court it has largely been a one-way partisan street.”
According to the widow, the “Democrats flagrantly lied about Bob’s record of opinions,” just days after Biden dropped out of the presidential race due to plagiarism.
“In the course of one week Sen. Biden orchestrated a vicious lying assault and was caught passing off someone else’s words as his own,” she said. “Thirty-three years later he is still a man without a compass, guided now by prevailing progressive winds.”
Years after the hearing and Bork’s retirement from his position on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1988 to “devote himself to writing and teaching,” Mary Ellen Bork said Democrats “would often come up to him to apologize for the way the Democratic politicians treated him and would leave with tears in their eyes,” but not Biden.
“We will all have tears in our eyes if Joe Biden is elected president,” she wrote.
