‘Hoo-Boy’: Democratic Senator Stunned Trump Judicial Nominee Can’t Answer Single Question on Rule of Law

Trump Deviously Tries to Open a Seat on the Federal Election Commission

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) did not only block President Barack Obama from filling an open seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, he blocked Obama from filling over one hundred federal judgeships, all in the calculation that a Republican president might be elected to fill them. He was right, and now President Donald Trump, who is planning to fill four SCOTUS seats, is flooding the entire federal bench, coast to coast, with an unprecedented number of right wing conservative judges, with the help and support of Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley. Grassley has also gone to extreme measures to protect Trump.

“The president’s judicial nominees have been notably white, male, and conservative,” Mother Jones noted last month. “Trump has moved quickly to fill these lifetime appointments with a slate of the most conservative and least diverse nominations since Reagan.”

Some are repugnant. Others hold vile and dangerous views. Not all are qualified.

Thursday night, Democratic U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island couldn’t help but mock the testimony of a Trump U.S. District Court nominee.

“Hoo-boy,” he tweeted, noting GOP Senator John Kennedy had asked the Trump nominee “basic questions of law & he can’t answer a single one.” 

He also answered “no” repeatedly when asked if he has ever tried a case, anywhere.

The nominee is Matthew Spencer Petersen, a commissioner on the Federal Election Commission. Nominating him to the bench is a great way for Trump to open a seat on the FEC, and fill it with a candidate that will advance the GOP’s agenda of making it harder for U.S. citizens, especially those who tend to vote for Democrats, to vote at all. 

Petersen was instrumental in helping to draft the Help America Vote Act of 2002, exactly the kind of Federal Election Commissioner Trump and his “voter fraud commission” don’t want on the FEC.

Watch Petersen’s testimony, and weep.

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