President Trump should renominate North Carolina lawyer Thomas Farr for a federal judgeship, and the Senate should approve him, despite the strange and still-unexplained opposition to Farr by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.
Last November, Scott told Fox News’ Shannon Bream that he intended to support Farr’s nomination, only to change his mind 24 hours later and force the nomination to be withdrawn for the rest of the last Congress. Scott provided no specifics as to why he changed his mind.
At issue was a 1991 memo regarding a racially charged postcard that had been mailed by the 1990 re-election campaign of then-Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C. As Scott originally and accurately told Bream, the memo reported that Farr had explicitly advised against the mailer and was only tangentially involved in the overall campaign. Farr also had been assigned by his law firm, as a first year associate, to do legal work for Helms’ earlier, 1984 campaign — in which, as the 1991 memo also makes clear, Farr distinguished himself by successfully advising the campaign to avoid racial pitfalls.
In short, the memo exonerated Farr of nefarious activity and, as Scott himself told Bream, Farr’s record is otherwise superb — and even some of his ideological adversaries who were Obama appointees have attested to his fine character.
Farr was also the chairman of the review committee which, some 20 years ago, recommended Bill Webb for appointment as a federal magistrate, the only African-American ever to serve on the federal bench in the Eastern District of North Carolina.
Nonetheless, Scott dug in his heels against Farr last week, issuing a scathing statement in response to a letter 33 conservative luminaries sent to him asking him to drop his opposition. Those signatories included South Carolinian Jim DeMint, the former president of the Heritage Foundation whose former Senate seat Scott now holds, and former U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese.
Scott issued his statement to the McClatchy News Service, which quoted from it selectively. Still, nothing in the statement explained what facts or evidence emerged in the key 24 hours last November that made him change his mind.
I, therefore, sent a detailed email yesterday (Feb. 4) to Scott’s press aides, asking four questions. First, I asked that he send me the entire statement issued to McClatchy. Second, referencing a vague sentence therein where he said the 1991 memo “created more concerns,” I asked: “What are those specific new concerns?” Third, as Scott had said. if the conservative letter writers are ignoring “facts” justifying his opposition, I asked what those facts are.
Finally, I wrote: “Your boss told McClatchy that the 1991 memo ‘raise(d) serious questions about the level of involvement Mr. Farr had in the Helms campaign.’ Yet, earlier, he had said the memo, plus the testimony from the Obama appointees, exonerated Mr. Farr. …What changed?”
Several hours after my message, press aide Ken Farnaso responded by sending the entire statement from which McClatchy had quoted. He did not answer any of my other three questions, as to specifics of the senator’s “concerns,” “facts,” or change of mind.
To give Scott his due, I include the whole statement, here:
However, for some reason the authors of this letter choose to ignore those facts, and instead implicate that I have been co-opted by the left and am incapable of my own decision making. Why they have chosen to expend so much energy on this particular nomination I do not know, but what I do know is they have not spent anywhere near as much time on true racial reconciliation efforts, decrying comments by those like Steve King, or working to move our party together towards a stronger, more unified future. Division may get you attention, but I hope they will take this opportunity to join me in real efforts to bring our nation together, be it by traveling to Selma on the anniversary of the Civil Rights March, finding policy solutions like Opportunity Zones to help those most in need, or any other number of productive roads forward.
I followed up, at 4:42 p.m. Eastern time yesterday, with yet another note asking for specifics. At this writing, 21 hours later, I have received no further reply.
This whole situation is, to use an old Shakespearean phrase, passing strange.
It is strange for a senator to change his mind 24 hours after announcing support for a nominee or bill. If a senator does experience such a dramatic change of heart, it is strange if he doesn’t cite a specific new discovery. It is even stranger if he cites the same evidence that he said supported the nominee as reason to now oppose him, without saying what in the memo contradicted his own earlier interpretation.
It is strange for a senator of one party not to defer to the senior senator from his own state and his own party on such a matter, if the senior senator is the chairman of the very committee responsible for examining the nominee — South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the case of judicial selections, it is unusual for a senator not to defer to both senators of the nominee’s home state — in this case, North Carolina — if both senators are of the same party as he is.
Again, senators are perfectly free to make their own judgments. Yet, in cases like these, if a senator’s judgment makes him feel the need to overcome the ordinary senatorial courtesies described above, and especially if the senator at issue is contradicting his own earlier stance, then he owes more of an explanation than Scott has provided.
Scott cites “reports from the George H.W. Bush Department of Justice” as the basis of his doubts about Farr. He won’t say what reports make him feel so. Graham says the reports argue in Farr’s favor. The two North Carolina senators also say the reports argue in Farr’s favor. Meese and DeMint and 31 of Scott’s usual allies agree with Scott’s Carolina colleagues. The plain language of the memo favors Farr.
To wit: “Farr did not play an active role in the 1990 Helms campaign” — other than being “connected” enough to those who did that he relayed a key phone call to them. And, when asked to advise campaign officials about “ballot security,” Farr told them a postcard mailing, of any sort, “would not be particularly useful.” After advising against any postcard, he was not consulted — in other words, completely out of the loop — about the specific nature of the controversial cards that were eventually mailed. Not their content, not their targeted audience. Nothing.
For this noninvolvement in a now-discredited campaign, Farr is suffering an unmerited hit to his reputation, with the insinuation that he is a racist despite abundant evidence to the contrary.
This is not just strange, but borderline unconscionable. Unless Scott, an otherwise excellent senator, offers some specific reasons to the contrary, other Republican senators should approve Farr for the federal bench over his objection. And, in so doing, they should take a stand against the rise of character assassination by unsupported insinuation.
