Leonard Leo, an adviser to President Trump about the Supreme Court, said Monday that the Senate will confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination before the week ends.
Gorsuch’s nomination was advanced by the Senate Judiciary Committee along partisan lines Monday, but the bid will confront a Democratic filibuster when the full Senate considers his nomination later this week. Senate Republican leadership has signaled its willingness to deploy the “nuclear option” in response, which would lower the vote threshold necessary to confirm Gorsuch to the high court.
Leo, who attended Monday’s Judiciary Committee meeting before the vote on Gorsuch, expressed confidence that Democrats’ blockade of Gorsuch would not work.
“The committee’s vote today is the first vote in a process that will end this week with Judge Gorsuch confirmed to the Supreme Court,” Leo said. “His jurisprudence and decisions are in the mainstream of American legal thought, which is why his nomination has received bipartisan support.
“Senator Schumer and some of his Democratic colleagues are going to break over 200 years of Senate tradition because they want a Supreme Court justice to rubber-stamp their far-left political agenda. Never in the history of the United States has there been a successful partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee. Both the Constitution and Senate history expect that it takes 51 votes to confirm a Supreme Court Justice, and that’s what Senator McConnell is going to ensure if he is forced to do so.”
The full Senate is expected to vote on Gorsuch’s nomination Friday.
