Earlier Tuesday, the White House delivered to Capitol Hill the formal questionnaire court nominees must provide the Judiciary Committee, even though no hearings or votes are planned for Garland, who is now the chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
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Garland’s questionnaire and related documents was submitted Tuesday and totaled some 2,200 pages. We must not sit idle as President Barack Obama replaces a judge like Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the most thoughtful, clear-thinking voices advocating for restraint and solid constitutional interpretation, with a radical activist who doesn’t truly express the will of the people.
It’s an unusual move, as Supreme Court nominees normally refrain from public speaking between their nominations and confirmation hearings.
The meeting comes as the judge has completed a Senate Judiciary Questionnaire.
A poll released Wednesday morning by Quinnipiac University, showed that the majority of voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania approve, by double digits in each state, of Merrick Garland as the next Supreme Court Justice and that the nominee should receive a traditional confirmation hearing rather than wait for the next president to announce a nominee. Garland disagreed with the court, saying “no act of Congress or judicial precedent barred the plaintiffs from suing private contractors”.
The financial net worth statement, an itemized list of all the nominee’s assets, is the most sensitive information Garland has to provide during the nomination process, Roll Call reports. Adding to the pressure was Donald Trump’s apparent ascension to presumptive GOP nominee, which has heightened tough questions over whether those senators would prefer a Trump nominee to Garland.
“I think most Republicans will roll the dice and assume that it would be a more conservative pick if it were Trump”, Sen.
Severino discounted Wolf’s blog post, which said that with Trump as the nominee, Republicans have “no chance” of winning the White House, and should therefore confirm Garland rather than risk Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton appointing a more liberal judge later.
On Monday, a spokeswoman for Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said the questionnaire would be posted and pushed back on the Democrats’ refrain that the Senate was failing to “do its job” by refusing to hold hearings.
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Garland has already met with Wisconsin’s senior Senator Tammy Baldwin, who is a Democrat.
