Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings are scheduled to start Monday, 12th October, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on the night of Saturday night. Sen. Graham made the announcement four hours after Barrett’s nomination was made public by the high-spirited President Donald Trump in a Rose Garden ceremony.
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Trump’s nominee will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for what will certainly be a contentious process to replace the position of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg following her death on the 18th of September.
Even though expedited, the process will still need to follow the same framework as the previous two Supreme Court confirmation hearings that took place under the Trump administration, Graham said.
Following the same pattern, Barrett’s hearings will last for four days, during which time she will give opening statements, field questions from Senators, and listen to testimony from outside witnesses.
“The nominee will be challenged, and that’s appropriate to challenge the nominee, but if they treat Judge Barrett like they did Justice Kavanaugh it’s going to blow up in Democrats’ face big time,” Graham claimed.
“Amy Coney Barrett will decide cases based on the text of the Constitution as written,” President Trump said of his choice at the Rose Garden event.
“As Amy has said, being a judge takes courage. You are not there to decide cases as you prefer but to do your duty and follow the law wherever it may take you.”
Barrett’s appointment becomes Mr. Trump’s third to the Supreme Court, and it would automatically remake the Apex Court a conservative body.
Democrats have grown furious with the Republican-controlled Senate, calling its leaders contradictory and disingenuous.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) did not allow lawmakers to consider then-President Barack Obama’s SCOTUS nomination, Judge Merrick Garland, after the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in Feb. 2016, because it was an election year.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who is a member of the Judiciary Committee, has threatened to break with committee tradition and not meet with Barrett.
“I will refuse to treat this process as legitimate & will not meet with Judge Amy Coney Barrett,” he wrote on Twitter, warning that her confirmation could pave the way for legal rollbacks of abortion and health care rights.
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Graham, Trump and other Republicans have lauded Barrett as a top legal scholar and first-in-her-class graduate of Notre Dame Law School.
President Trump joked at a rally Saturday night in Pennsylvania that she should be running for president. When Fox Host Jeanine Pirro asked Graham whether he thought Democrats would boycott the hearings outright, he laughed.
“Well, it’ll make ’em quicker,” Graham joked.
