It seems Democrats learned nothing from grilling qualified judicial nominees and asserting absurd religious (or yearbook!) litmus tests. Like the judicial nomination process for Amy Coney Barrett or Brett Kavanaugh, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are putting President Trump’s latest nominee for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Neomi Rao, through the wringer.
Although members asked her a few questions regarding substantive legal issues, it’s her insightful opinions she held in college with which Democrats are taking issue.
There’s no doubt Rao is qualified on merits alone. She graduated Yale, attended the University of Chicago Law School, and clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas at the Supreme Court. In 2017, Trump nominated Rao to be the administrator of the Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs. She even passes the “diversity” test liberals are claiming doesn’t exist: If confirmed, Rao would be the first Indian-American woman on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. While she’s certainly not above scrutiny, she shouldn’t be subjected to the type of accusatory question and answer session that took place Tuesday at the hands of 2020 candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.
While Democrats on the Judiciary Committee were obsessively interrogating Kavanaugh about purported alcohol abuse and alleged sexual assault, those tactics won’t work with a female nominee. Democrats aren’t that daft. Still, Harris wasted no time in bringing up Rao’s op-eds on sexual assault, which she authored while at Yale in the 1990s, reported initially at BuzzFeed. To Harris, who seems to relish using her prosecutor background, this seemed like a gold mine to her. The exchange went like this:
Rao: Senator it’s just sort of a common sense idea about excessive drinking, that’s advice that was given to me by my mother …
Harris: So that’s one step you think women can take to avoid becoming a victim of sexual assault?
Rao: It is just a way to make it less likely. It’s not to blame the victim. Rape and sexual assault are horrible crimes but we’re talking about what you can do …
Harris: Are there others … ?
Rao: That is one of the issues I discussed …
Harris: Do you believe if a woman does not take those steps that she is at fault?
Rao: Uh, no.
Harris: So what is the significance of taking those steps?
Rao: It’s the significance of trying to avoid being the victim of any crime …
Even after questioning, Harris wasn’t satisfied. She tweeted:
Here’s the bottom line: survivors of sexual assault should not be blamed for the trauma they’ve experienced. Neomi Rao’s prior writings about sexual assault are completely unacceptable and her responses to my questions today were deeply troubling. pic.twitter.com/jlOuhHWtQx
— Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) February 5, 2019
Since when is the suggestion that men and women behave in a vigilant manner, so as to avoid being the victim of any kind of crime, silly? Why does this suggestion, when offered by a woman who seems more of a textualist, whom Trump favors, make a woman like Harris cringe? It’s common sense, completely apolitical, and simply an idea that fits under best practices for young adults, male and female alike.
Any nominee up for a federal bench should submit to the process of interrogation — judges shouldn’t be de facto confirmed. But since Trump took office, or even decades earlier with Robert Bork, these sessions have taken what should have been a test of qualifications, legal merit, and academic scholarship and turned it into a circus of political identity that seems even too far left for progressives.
If Harris and her Democratic cohorts want to question Rao on substantive legal matters (which they did sporadically) that should continue, albeit consistently, and for the entire period. To make a nominee answer for decades-old opinion pieces not only tarnishes federal benches nationwide, but the entire judicial confirmation process.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
