On 4/17/2024, during a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republicans — particularly Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn — bristled at the nominee, who they said was advanced without blue slip approvals from his home state lawmakers. The White House last month tapped Kevin Ritz, currently a U.S. attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, to fill a vacancy on the Sixth Circuit, which takes cases from lower courts in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. Ritz would replace Judge Julia Smith Gibbons, if confirmed to the court. The George W. Bush appointee opted to take senior status, or semi-retirement, upon confirmation of a successor.

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, grilled the nominee on a 2008 case he prosecuted in the Western District of Tennessee, questioning whether he had misrepresented the terms of a plea deal to the defendant’s counsel. The lawmaker contended that Ritz’s conduct had been the basis of a formal complaint to the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

According to court documents, the defendant’s lawyer asked to withdraw from the case after discovering that the terms of the plea deal, which she said had been provided by Ritz and relayed to her client, were inaccurate and set the defendant up for a harsher sentence. Hawley accused Ritz of “sandbagging” the plea deal and tacking on an extra charge to the agreement.

The nominee, however, denied that he had done anything out of line and said he had no knowledge of any formal complaint made against him. The allegations of improper behavior, he said, were false. “It’s very important for [U.S. attorneys] and defense attorneys to be able to trust each other,” Ritz told lawmakers, “and I took my reputation very seriously.”

Ritz said he didn’t know about the complaint Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said was filed with the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility, nor was he aware of any official finding in the matter. He also said he didn’t behave unethically in the case and that the allegations were false. “I’ve had a career, senator, of a clean ethical record,” Ritz said to Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).

https://www.facebook.com/HygoNewsUSA/videos/406088118870395
Hawley to Nominee Lying: very unusual, sandbag, clear memory on that but sudden amnesia on this