A staffer for Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., rebuffed White House entreaties ahead of what is speculated to be a highly partisan confirmation process of President Trump’s latest Supreme Court nominee, according to a report.
“We want nothing to do with you,” Nathan Barankin, Harris’ chief of staff, told White House Counsel Don McGahn when he phoned her office to talk about the forthcoming process, per Fox News.
But Barankin said he only spoke to an aide for McGahn, and denied the reported characterization of the conversation.
“We said no such thing,” he wrote on Twitter.
I talked to the staffer for Don Mcgahn who called our office, and he was definitely not POTUS or his representative, and we said no such thing. https://t.co/RMBGUR0Q2j
— Nathan Barankin (@nathanbarankin) July 10, 2018
Harris, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, voiced her blanket opposition on Monday to Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, federal appeals court Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
Trump’s Supreme Court Justice nominee, Judge Kavanaugh, represents a direct and fundamental threat to the rights and health care of hundreds of millions of Americans. I will oppose his nomination to the Supreme Court. #SCOTUSpick
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) July 10, 2018
The alleged curt conversation between Harris and the White House follows four Senate Democrats from red states turning down invites to attend the Monday night announcement at the White House of Kavanaugh, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, as Trump’s choice to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court.
Sens. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., declined to attend the prime-time event. Donnelly, Heitkamp, and Manchin, however, voted in 2017 to confirm Trump’s first nominee, Justice Neil Gorsuch. Jones was not a member of the Senate at the time.
Kennedy announced in June he intended to retire from the Supreme Court as of July 31 after serving about 20 years on the bench.
