Judges...Judges....Judges

[Valin]

Hugh Hewitt Show

Hugh Hewitt

Feb. 5 2019

Audio

(Snip)

HH: All right. You’ll like The Last Kingdom. Let me begin by asking you about not the Finance Committee, but the Judiciary Committee, of which you were the chair and now you remain a member. My friend, Lindsey Graham, has taken over the gavel from you, and it’s become like an electric car. It’s not making any noise. Where the heck are the nominees, Senator Grassley?

CG: A very important nominee is up today for hearing, Ms. Rao, for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, very well-qualified, an expert on regulatory actions. And that is the court that reviews most of the decisions that are appealed from the district court in the D.C., because these regulations for the most part are written here in Washington, D.C. So having an expert like her and a person that believes in the rule of law and will not want Congress to delegate too much power, and when it is delegated to the bureaucracy, to make sure that the bureaucrats stay within the bounds of the law. That’s very, very important if you want to get at the deep state.

HH: Absolutely correct. And by the way, I clerked on the D.C. Circuit. Neomi Rao is a terrific nominee. She is one of 12 Circuit Court nominees right now. But why only one? Why don’t we just, they’ve been nominated before. Why not put all 12 up there and blow them through?

CG: Oh, we’re taking care of the ones that were nominated before that have already had a hearing. On Thursday, we will, I don’t know if we’ll get all 40 voted out in one day or not, but we have people that were returned to the White House as the law requires at the end of the year. They’re on the agenda now. They were on the agenda last Thursday. Any one member can hold them over, so they’ve been held over. So these 40 district and Circuit judges will be voted out Thursday. So I can assure you that judges are a big priority, even for the new chairman of the committee, just as important as they are for me. And then yesterday…

HH: I think you’ve got to poke Lindsey a little bit, Senator Grassley. He’s not moving at the pace you did. I think you’ve just got to give him a little goose there and tell him he’s got to get going.

CG: Well, listen, I’m going to be helping him. I’m going to let him run the committee, but I’m going to be there as his first lieutenant, I guess, and doing what I can to move things along. I’ll be at the hearing today. And by the way, there is one thing about Lindsey that I want you to appreciate that maybe you would have found fault with Chuck Grassley. I was maybe a little too tolerant towards the Democrats talking and talking and talking and talking, not cutting them off, letting them kind of filibuster. We eventually got our work done, but Lindsey, I don’t think, is going to put up with that sort of crap.

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