The Senate voted to confirm President Donald Trump’s judicial nominee Leonard Steven Grasz, who has been Nebraska’s chief deputy attorney general for 11 years. There would be no problem if Grasz hadn’t earned “not qualified” rating from the American Bar Association.
All the Republicans who were present voted to confirm Grasz to a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. All the Democrats opposed him.
It rarely happens that the Senate confirms a judge with such an abysmal rating from the national legal organization, The Huffington Post reports, adding that the association has reviewed more than 1,700 federal judicial nominees since 1989 and only three have so far been unanimously deemed unqualified. Grasz is one of them, and the other two were nominees of former President George W. Bush and were withdrawn and replaced.
Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader, was confused that Grasz was getting a vote.
“A panel of nonpartisan legal experts unanimously concluded that this man is not fit to be a judge. What else do my colleagues need to know?” he asked.
More than 180 people were interviewed by ABA regarding Grasz’s fitness to be a judge. He was described as rude and his colleagues were afraid of consequences if they said something negative about him because of his connection to powerful politicians in Nebraska.
“In sum, the evaluators and the Committee found that temperament issues, particularly bias and lack of open-mindedness, were problematic. The evaluators found that the people interviewed believed the nominee’s bias and the lens through which he viewed his role as a judge colored his ability to judge fairly,” Pam Bresnahan, the chair of the ABA’s standing committee that reviews nominees, stated.
There are three other Trump judicial nominees to get a “not qualified” ABA rating – district court nominees Brett Talley, Charles Goodwin and Holly Teeter.
Be the first to comment