Richard Painter floats novel idea for derailing Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee
In the three days since Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy abruptly and shockingly announced his retirement, two things have become clear. The first is that if Donald Trump is allowed to pick Kennedy’s replacement, he’ll pick a conservative extremist who will overturn every forward-thinking ruling the court has made over the past fifty years, and who will also try to get him off the hook for his Trump-Russia crimes. The second is that Kennedy’s retirement has suspicious connections to the Trump-Russia scandal.
It’s come to light that Justice Anthony Kennedy’s son was a key executive at Deutsche Bank, and that he worked closely with Donald Trump on various banking matters. Deutsche Bank has loaned billions of dollars to Trump, much of it under suspicious circumstances. Deutsche was also busted by U.S. and European regulators in early 2018 for a years-long pattern of laundering billions of dollars of Russia money into the hands of clients in places like New York City. Now Justice Kennedy is suddenly handing his son’s close financial partner Donald Trump a key victory at a crucial time. But not so fast, says one legal expert.
Richard Painter, who served as the White House chief ethics counsel for the final years of the George W. Bush administration, and who has since become an outspoken Trump critic and a Democratic candidate for Senate, is proposing a method of derailing Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. Here’s what he tweeted about the matter: “The circumstances of Justice Kennedy’s resignation must be investigated by the Senate Judiciary Committee before any replacement is considered. The Constitution does not give Trump the power to use underhanded means to induce Supreme Court resignations.”
The Republican Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is Chuck Grassley, who has alternated between trying to protect Donald Trump, and signing off on Democratic ranking member Dianne Feinstein’s ongoing efforts to expose Trump’s scandals. Any Senate Judiciary Committee probe into Anthony Kennedy’s retirement could hold up the confirmation process for his replacement by months – perhaps even through the midterms. The question is whether the public can pressure Grassley into getting out of Feinstein’s way, so she can pursue such an investigation.
