Kennedy: shame on us, at least minimal level of integrity; didn’t mean it, she made a pinky promise

Republican John Cornyn questioned Senator John Kennedy on independent court system. The hearing focused again on Sarah Russell decision to sign what amounts to an anti-prison manifesto.

On 11/30/2023, Connecticut law professor Sarah Russell’s nomination to the federal court suffered through another brutal Senate judiciary committee hearing that focused again on her decision to sign what amounts to an anti-prison manifesto.

But in the end she was approved on a narrow 11-10 party line vote and the nomination was sent to the full Senate for confirmation.

Republicans attacked Russell, as they did during an earlier hearing, over a 2020 letter she signed with hundreds of others calling on Gov. Ned Lamont to release thousands of state prison and jail inmates at the start of the pandemic and “declare a moratorium on incarceration” during it.

The letter said prisons and jails are “detrimental to human rights and disproportionately harm marginalized communities, including Black, brown, Indigenous and other communities of color; immigrants; people with mental illness; people with disabilities; people in the LGBTQ+ community; people who use drugs; people engaged in sex work and street economies; and people experiencing houselessness [sic] and poverty.”

Russell failed to deliver her writings to the committee, something she called an oversight. U.S. Sen John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, accused Russell of purposefully withholding a “radical” letter. “This is America,” he said. “Ms. Russell has a constitutional right to say these things, to believe those things. She does not have a constitutional right to be a federal judge. And she is not qualified to be a federal judge if those are her beliefs.”

Russell is a law professor at Quinnipiac University who has taught at Yale University and worked as a public defender in federal court. She is part of the cohort of federal judges nominated by Biden, who called on the Senate at the start of his term to confirm federal judges that diversity the court by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and professional background.

Kennedy: shame on us, at least minimal level of integrity; she didn’t mean it, she made a pinky promise

Transcript Highlights

Transcribed from the video audio:

• How do you reconcile this letter that you read from, from the statement that the Senator from Connecticut
• And during committee, instead of saying, yeah, I signed the letter, and I shouldn’t have done it, I don’t believe that
• And then she’ll make a pinky promise that she’ll be a fair federal judge
• At a minimum, just because you’ve seen my cousin then, he doesn’t qualify you to be on the federal bench
• At a minimum, there’ll be a minimum level of integrity and a minimum level of adherence to the rule of law
• How can a litigant, a citizen accused of a crime, somebody who goes to court to seek vindication for a wrong done to them, how can they have any confidence whatsoever in a judge that won’t tell the truth
• And shame on us for allowing someone like that to get on the federal bench
• The independence of the judiciary in the United States is a single, most distinguishing feature of our form of government
• But we also said that these judges should be independent of politics that’s why they get lifetime appointments
• That’s why the Constitution says their salary cannot be diminished while they serve in office

Sources

• Facebook