>> The Senate Judiciary Committee kicked off its Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearings
today.
And if this process seems rushed to you, you're not the only one because it seems like Barrett
may have skipped some details in her disclosures what she needed to provide to the Senate.
So it's day one of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barret's confirmation hearings.
And Senate Judiciary Committee Democratic are already wondering out loud if Barrett
lie by omission in her senate questionnaire.
Ranking Member Sen. Dianne Feinstein and all of the other Judiciary Committee democrats,
Sen. Kamala Harris included Sending a letter to assistant attorney general Beth a Williams
that they find judge Barrett's incomplete Senate Judiciary questionnaire to be troubling.
Democrats focused on three admissions in particular, the first two of them having to do with Barrett's
pro life activities.
On the first two, Democrats suggested that it was telling that Barret and Williams didn't
disclose Barrett's speeches on Roe v Wade and her signing of a pro-life ad until after
the media found out.
So, that included two 2013 talks as well as an advertisement that Judge Barrett signed
on to as a member of Notre Dame's University's faculty for life.
That was some sort of group there.
And there's also more than she didn't disclose.
Press reports have also revealed that Judge Barrett failed to disclose to the committee
her legal work as one of two lead attorneys who defended the Pittsburgh steel magnate.
Accused of orchestrating the bankruptcy of a major Pennsylvania hospital system.
The letter continued.
Presumably Democrats are interested in playing this detail up because they see Barrett as
the end of the Affordable Care Act, rightly.
So Democrats said all of this raises questions about Barrett's candor to the Senate Judiciary
Committee and raises serious concerns.
The Republican orchestrated sprint to confirm Barrett before the election has resulted in
a shoddy confirmation process.
So, I would say it's both, she clearly meant to obfuscate and hide some of these details,
but it's shoddy the process itself because we also see that it's rushed.
It's rushed on purpose.
Trump has said that it's going to be rushed.
They want to get the nomination in before the election, completely undercutting the
past precedent that Republicans tried to set which we'll get to later.
But before I get into the things that she did disclose that are troubling and I don't
think are reported on enough, what do you have to say about all this Jr?
>> Well, I'm the first question always wonder whenever things like this happen, these obvious
omissions or straight lies, or really trying to hide records from the American people and
also maybe centers that are gonna ask her about it.
Is the assumption that maybe they can get away with it.
And that's always the first thing whenever anybody does something wrong or maybe cut
some corners or maybe lies on a resume.
Not necessarily what has happened here as far as lying on a resume but at least omitting
things that could be brought up is maybe no one will notice.
There's no way, I don't think, there's any way that they potentially thought that.
I mean, you're gonna go through a Supreme Court nominee in a contentious point right
before an election to potentially oust a president that is outrageously unpopular.
Do you think that they accidentally forgot these major things about her record?
No, there's I don't think there's much of a chance that they forgot or she forgot before
putting them in.
These are things that they didn't wanna have ammunition may be put forward.
But in reality if they continue to go down the same line that they've been through in
anything that this administration does, if it's support is does is who cares?
Everything we do, we know that opposition is gonna point it out and call out the negative
things about it and how it's bad for the country.
And our side is gonna excuse it no matter what.
I don't know why they didn't continue down the same path because now it adds an extra
layer for Democrats to say, hey look, they admitted these things.
It sounds like they're not very proud of these aspects of her record.
They're not proud of the fact that she was working to try and openly be against women's
rights.
And these type of things that we know is gonna come up and also Affordable Care Act, maybe
getting in time to subvert another election.
All these things are gonna come up, you might as well admit it from the beginning.
But I don't know maybe it'll work no matter what they do because we're tearing down a
freeway at rapid speeds of lying and being incoherent to the American people.
So why would they start now?
I'm still trying to find answer that part of the question.
>> Well there's no incentive not to lie.
There's no incentive to be truthful and the modern Republican Party won the Democrats
are terrible at holding republicans accountable here.
But basically the calculation was, maybe they won't catch this and if they do so what we
know the Republicans are going to rubber stamp her nomination anyway if the Democrats do
allow this procedurally.
So I totally agree with you Jr.
But in terms of her election integrity, I think that's a really important topic and
it is something that she did disclose, I believe in her records.
But even that is troubling in itself, the details of it.
So some great reporting from Ari Berman of Mother Jones.
The article came out yesterday, justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh worked on George
W. Bush's legal team during the 2000, Florida recount and successfully intervened to stop
democratic ballots from being counted.
If confirmed, Barrett would be a third justice who worked for Republicans during the Florida
recount increasing the likelihood that the court with a 6-3 conservative.
Conservative majority would side with Trump, in a post election dispute, even if the facts
and the law aren't on the President's side.
On her questionnaire for the Senate Judiciary Committee, Barrett said she provided research
and briefing assistance on Bush v Gore as a young associate with Miller, Cassidy, Larocca
and Lewin.
I worked on the case on location in Florida for about a week at the outset of the litigation
she wrote.
Barrett said she worked in Florida with Stuart Levy, a partner at the firm who is now head
of the Libra Association a cryptocurrency organization started by Facebook.
According to court records and interviews with lawyers involved in 2000 recount, Levey,
and Barrett work not just on Bush v gore but on to little known but pivotal related cases
during the recount.
In those cases republicans sought to count mail ballots that were disputed by Democrats
because of evidence that republican operatives had altered incomplete absentee ballot request
forms.
That position stands in sharp contrast to Trump's current assault on male voting.
But there's a certain consistency here.
Republicans will take whatever stance on male ballots maximizes their electoral chances.
And Barrett's work in 2000 suggests she might be willing to play along and I would say might
is not the accurate word.
I would editorialize on the reporting here and say she would absolutely play along.
There is this fiction that everyone in Washington with the outside of a select few progressives
have decided they're going to go along with that the judiciary is impartial.
And that it's 1812 and they don't have access to newspapers or CNN.
And they don't read the news, and they just looks at the merits of the case and decide
from there and it's based on their judicial philosophy that's independent of politics,
BS obviously.
Barrett if she gets on the court and Trump has said I think the Supreme Court is going
to be involved in litigation about the outcome of the election, we know she's gonna side
with Trump.
It needs to be enough of a landslide that that case is undercut.
But there's a very good chance that it's not just bluster from Trump that he is going to
challenge the legitimacy of the election in court.
And we now know from Barrett's pass, but she helped republicans stop the democratic recounts
stop ballots from being counted where Gore would have won and handed the election to
George W Bush prematurely.
She could do the same thing here with Trump, stranger things have happened.
>> Yeah, we were just talking about how the potential oversight that she may have had
with putting certain things in her record.
Or in the process for her being nominated, that we're discovering now, but things like
this, none of this is a mistake either.
So even back in 2000, she's working on this.
This is your resume for a positive thing for the Republican Party to nominate you this.
Many several, many people that I'm sure the President could have nominated the Supreme
Court, they would have been rushed through the same process as she has.
But when you do something like this from back in the day like that, you are setting ourselves
up to be accepted by this republican party as a positive character here.
So this isn't just a Trump thing.
This is a build up for 20 years now, this was 20 years ago.
Republican party knows this about her.
They know who she worked with, they know her background.
This is something that's a resume builder for her.
So usually you wanna hide some of the things you may have worked on or maybe not participate
on certain things when anybody in her position, I'm sure had aspirations of maybe being on
Supreme Court at some point.
So in doing so, you forge a path.
People in these types of positions forge a path as people that wanna run for president,
16 years from now, right?
And they're thinking about it.
They're positioning themselves.
I think it's similar with Supreme Court Justice.
I think she positioned herself with work on things like the Bush v Gore, and now these
are paying off, and it's perfect.
You have a president in place that would love to have another Supreme Court Justice come
in and do the same thing or maybe to have a larger role and a similar role that she
played back in the day.
It all adds up.
This is an entire Republican party process and problem, not just a Donald Trump problem.
They're like, hey, we got Donald Trump in place.
He can help us push this through because we always want to have as many justices on the
Supreme Court as possible that will do our bidding that have nothing to do with actually
judging based off of the Constitution or the law.
>> Yeah, and and that's why it's just so important not to rehabilitate the Republican party and
And have them distance themselves from Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is exactly who they are.
All the judicial appointments are in line with who Republicans would appoint and policy
wise they're identical to it's just in the style and the Wrecking Ball nature of Trump.
That's
the difference.