Lankford Disappointed in Democrats’ Baseless Smear Campaign on Judge Barrett

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WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) today delivered a harsh rebuke of the Democrats’ smear campaign of Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the floor of the Senate over the weekend and in the weeks prior that included misleading insinuations or outright accusations that she wants to take away health care, supports voter suppression, and even that she is some kind of closet segregationist.

Last week, Lankford met with Judge Barrett to discuss religious liberty, anti-trust laws, and a variety of other issues. Lankford expressed support for President Trump’s nomination of Judge Barrett on September 26 after previously supporting her nomination to fill a vacancy on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017. After the partisan attacks against Judge Barrett’s devout Catholic faith reignited in the media, Lankford spoke on the Senate floor on September 30 in support of Judge Barrett’s ability to practice her faith and serve as a highly qualified member of the Judicial Branch. Lankford also joined Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) to publish an op-ed on October 20 in support of Judge Barrett’s nomination.

Transcript

For the past several years, I’ve heard some pretty remarkable stories from the other side of the aisle and from the national media. We heard from an Atlantic article that the President called service members killed in action’ losers,’ spread all over the place until it was refuted flatly by 14 different officials that were on the trip. We heard claims that the Trump Administration had deployed federal troops to Portland, and they were taking over the streets of Portland until leadership of ICE and of DHS came to Congress and reported on what actually happened, starting with there were no federal troops that went. There was federal law enforcement that were there but it’s because it was a federal building that was under attack, and they weren’t just aimless roaming the streets arresting people. Though they did arrest the people that threw Molotov cocktails at the building.

I heard that the Post Office cannot handle the increased volume of mail and the Trump Administration is intentionally trying to slow the Post Office down so mail can’t come in, saying with frantic, breathless voices, ‘It could be 100 million ballots coming in the mail. Can the Post Office handle it?’ Until you find out that two weeks before Christmas last year, the Post Office handled 2.5 billion pieces of first-class mail just that one week. Certainly they can handle 100 million ballots coming in over a month.

I heard last summer the President had taken away toothbrushes from children at the border until a group of us were actually at the border the very next week and went into that exact facility saying, ‘There are no toothbrushes available for the children’ and saw a storeroom full of toiletries. Yes, including toothbrushes. I read the story and followed up with the ICE leadership about Muslims in our ICE detention facilities being forced to eat pork, tormenting them with feeding them pork against their faith. Until we actually followed up on the facts of it and found that story was completely false. It seems every day, sometimes multiple times a day, there is a new accusation that comes out to attack the Trump Administration and to be able to challenge them on every angle of every direction you can possible do it.

Then for the presiding officer, you know this full well because I sat in that same chair for two hours last night during our 30 hours of continuous debate following Senate rules to conclude a confirmation of a Supreme Court justice. And I was quite amazed at some of the things that I heard while I sat in the chair. I heard things like, ‘Well, Amy Coney Barrett should have never even come out of the Judiciary because Democrats boycotted coming actually to the hearing, and if they don’t come to the hearing, the nominee cannot come out. The Republicans have broken the rules.’ In fact, some of my colleagues went dangerously close to say, ‘Because they broke that rule, we’re going to break the next rule and impact the Court.’ Except they leave out one little thing. If that’s happened multiple times before, that it did follow the rules. There wasn’t a breaking of the rule in the Committee. In fact, one of the members speaking last night even said so far as ‘They broke the rules, except the parliamentarian ruled them in order, and so the parliamentarian was wrong as well.’

At least seven times since 2006, most recently in 2014 when Democratic Chairman Leahy sent a circuit court judge and two district judges to the floor out of Committee, when only one member of the minority was present, not fulfilling—quote, unquote—the rule. Republicans did not break the rule, as they came out of Committee with Amy Coney Barrett.

I heard over and over again that there’s never been a time like this that ever anyone has brought a Supreme Court nominee during an election year like this except when you actually go back and look through the history, which I’ve recounted on this floor before and most of my colleagues have recounted the actual history. But then last night I heard once again, even Abraham Lincoln, the month before the election, could have put in a nominee for the Supreme Court, and he chose not to wait for the election. And all I could do is sit with my mask-covered face in the presiding chair and smile and think about the Washington Post article that came out just a few weeks ago when Senator Harris gave the same lesson about Abraham Lincoln and the Supreme Court, and the Washington Post the day after article wrote an article “Kamala Harris’s Little History Lesson about Lincoln’s Controversy Wasn’t Exactly True.” And although Abraham Lincoln didn’t hold back and say, ‘I’ll wait until after the election,’ the Senate was not even in session during that time period. And Abraham Lincoln in the middle of a civil war was waiting it out, trying to be able to keep his fractured coalition together and not fracture it by naming someone. In fact, he shrewdly ended up naming one of his opponents in the Republican Party as the nominee that would come after he was re-elected.

It’s interesting to me how things seem to get twisted around in some of this debate. I heard last night during the debate time that Amy Coney Barrett refused to be able to answer the questions, the most basic questions about what she believes about things. The shocking thing about it is Amy Coney Barrett did the exact same thing Ruth Bader Ginsburg did during her nomination and every other nominee and that every other nominee has said.

They have said ‘I’m a judge. I can’t tell you how I’m going to rule on it because it has to be based on the facts of the case. It’s nothing I can just make up on the spot.’ In fact, this is what was quoted from Justice Ginsburg when she was Judge Ginsburg at the time and going through the nomination process. She said this, this from Judge Ginsburg: ‘I come to this proceeding to be judged as a judge, not as an advocate, because I am and hope to be continue as a judge. It would be wrong for me to say or preview in this Legislative chamber how I would cast my votes on questions the Supreme Court may be called upon to decide. Were I to rehearse it here—what I would say and how I would reason on such questions, I would act on such questions—I would act injudiciously. Judges in our system are bound to decide concrete cases, not abstract issues. Each case comes to the Court based on particular facts, and its decision should turn on those facts and the governing law stated and explained in light of particular arguments the parties or their representatives present. A judge is sworn to decide impartially, can offer no forecast, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judicial process.’

For some reason, Justice Ginsburg was celebrated by the left for not saying how she would rule, but Amy Coney Barrett has been shown disdain. To say she is not telling exactly how she will rule on every single issue.

The most painful thing that I heard last night when I was in the chair and that I have heard over and over again in the dialogue has been a sad, personal destruction and deception pushing Amy Coney Barrett over and over again as a closet racist and segregationist. I am disappointed that even this candidate is being challenged as a racist, quiet segregationist. It is the firebomb thrown into the middle of a dialogue. Over and over again, she was challenged by saying what would she do with Brown v. Board of Education, as if quietly she is a segregationist.

Over and over again, her concept on originalism was pushed. And here is how it was framed in the debate on this floor. She is an originalist. That means she is backward looking. That means she is supportive of those white men who supported slavery and would not allow women to be able to vote, because in their perspective, that’s what an originalist is. They want to go back to slavery and segregation and removing the rights of women to vote. Even last night saying originalists go back to the time of child labor.

It is a smear; it is a personal attack; and it is an act of desperation. It is an attempt to be able to terrify the American people that this mother of seven is to be feared because she will take away your health care, she will take away your rights, she will remove every option that protects the rights of individuals in a free society, and as was stated last night, she is afraid of we the people.

We have a responsibility in this body to be able to set the tone for debate. We disagree on things strongly, and so do the American people. But this should not be a place of smears and personal attacks and disdain for each other and for labeling people—something that if we were to sit down face to face and I were to ask the members on the other side in this chamber, ‘Do you really think that Judge Barrett is a racist segregationist?’ I have every confidence that the members on the other side would say, ‘No, but it plays well to the base.’ What have we become?

Future Justice Barrett, now Judge Barrett, was labeled over and over again as a person who doesn’t have her own mind, who is running big-dollar donors in the Federalist Society and is just a puppet of the right. Someone actually that was labeled to be groomed by the right for this position, as if that judge has not studied, worked, and prepared her entire life to serve.

She has her own mind. She is well prepared. She is eminently qualified. She is not a secret racist segregationist coming to take away health care from Americans. She is a judge that’s heard 600 cases, that graduated first in her law school class, that taught law for 15 years at Notre Dame University, and is well prepared, and, yes, does have this originalist view of the Constitution, meaning you can’t just look at it and make it say what you want to.

People on this floor can try to put words into her mouth, which she has not said, as I heard over and over again, like her desire is to suppress voters. But you cannot change how well prepared she is for this task and this moment. I’m grateful that America continues to produce great leaders and great individuals that work hard in their personal life, that study to prepare themselves to be ready to do whatever God calls them to do, and that are intensely focused on serving their fellow Americans in the best way they possibly can. We ask of justices one thing—at least I do—follow the law.

It seems my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are terrified that someone may just come follow the law, and that policy arguments may have to be debated back in Congress again. Well, I hope that’s true because there are policy arguments we need to resolve as a country, but let’s resolve them in this Chamber and not in the one across the street. The one across the street, let’s keep it nonpolitical. Focus on just helping Americans follow the law. I look forward to voting for Amy Coney Barrett later on tonight, and I look forward to the day when false accusations are seen for what they really are. Do the right thing, and let’s do it the right way.

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