{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-statement-judiciary-committee-meeting-consider-appellate-court-nominees", "Grassley Statement at Judiciary Committee Meeting to Consider Appellate Court Nominees Steve Grasz, James Ho & Don Willett", "2017-12-07", "2017", "2017-12", "Republican", "House", "IA", "Charles Grassley", "G000386", "www.grassley.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Prepared Statement by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee Executive Business Meeting December 7, 2017 \u00a0 Good morning. \u00a0 Today, we have 10 judicial nominees on today\u2019s agenda and all are ready for a vote. \u00a0 Of note, if confirmed, Terry Moorer would be the first African-American to serve as a United States District Judge for the Southern District of Alabama. And, if confirmed, James Ho would be the first Asian-American to serve as a United States Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit. \u00a0 The three circuit-court nominees \u2013 one from Nebraska and two from Texas \u2013 are all exceptionally well qualified to serve as appellate judges. \u00a0 The first is Steve Grasz for the Eighth Circuit. Like me, Mr. Grasz grew up on a Midwest farm. He is a very experienced and accomplished appellate lawyer in the Omaha office of the law firm Husch Blackwell. Prior to going into private practice, Mr. Grasz served as the Number 2 attorney in the Nebraska Attorney General\u2019s Office for nearly 12 years. \u00a0 Mr. Grasz has extensive experience before the Eighth Circuit, the court to which he is nominated.\u00a0 Mr. Grasz has also briefed nine cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. This includes a case Mr. Grasz argued on behalf of his client \u2013 the State of Nebraska \u2013 regarding Nebraska\u2019s ban on partial-birth abortions. And this appears to be the driving force in the ABA\u2019s head-scratching decision to argue that Mr. Grasz is \u201cnot qualified\u201d to serve as an appellate judge on the Eighth Circuit. \u00a0 Last week, Senator Feinstein asked that the Committee hold over Mr. Grasz\u2019s nomination for another week so that she could ask the ABA some follow-up questions regarding the rating they gave him. As I mentioned last week, I was willing to accommodate the request. But I emphasized that holding over nominees for more than a week will continue to be a rare exception.\u00a0 \u00a0 The Committee has now received a response from the ABA, so we\u2019re ready to proceed on Mr. Grasz\u2019s nomination. \u00a0 I believe Senator Sasse will speak to the ABA\u2019s rating of Mr. Grasz in more detail. But I\u2019ll say that we\u2019ve reviewed all the materials we\u2019ve received from the ABA, along with other sources, regarding his ABA rating. \u00a0 The Committee has also received letters of support from hundreds of people who know Mr. Grasz both personally and professionally.\u00a0 And in all these letters, we haven\u2019t heard from any accuser who has said that Mr. Grasz will insert personal bias into his judging, which is one of the ABA\u2019s unverified\u2014and unverifiable\u2014claims against him. All we have is the ABA\u2019s claim that an unspecified number of anonymous accusers believe that Mr. Grasz can\u2019t separate his personal preferences from applying the law in the cases before him.\u00a0 \u00a0 The ABA refuses to tell us the identity of these alleged accusers, so we can assess for ourselves whether these accusers are credible or have their own personal biases.\u00a0 The ABA certainly knows that no good judge would ever permit this type of hearsay evidence into a courtroom, because it is completely unfair and violates the most basic notions of due process. How can Mr. Grasz respond to vague and anonymous charges, when he has no idea who made these charges \u2013 or even what they specifically charge? \u00a0 Moreover, the testimony of the ABA\u2019s evaluators reveals many of Mr. Grasz\u2019s peers find him courteous and able to set aside his personal views in order to even-handedly apply the law. We certainly saw that in him when he came to testify at his nominations hearing. Indeed, Mr. Grasz was the model of a temperate potential judge at his hearing. \u00a0 The ABA\u2019s explanation as to why it credited the views of some anonymous accusers over hundreds of Mr. Grasz\u2019s peers was not, at all, satisfactory. I can\u2019t trust such a secretive process, especially when the ABA won\u2019t even shed any light on with whom it spoke. \u00a0 Given all this, the ABA\u2019s \u201cnot qualified\u201d rating of Mr. Grasz appears nothing more than a \u201chit job\u201d on an exceptionally well-qualified nominee, simply because the nominee is pro-life and conservative.\u00a0 The ABA\u2019s politicizing of the evaluation process for Mr. Grasz raises a number of questions and concerns. \u00a0 When the Ranking Member asked that I hold over Mr. Grasz\u2019s nomination for another week so that she could ask the ABA some follow-up questions, I mentioned that this indicated to me that she was still seriously considering how she would vote on his nomination. If she\u2019s already made up her mind and knew how she intended to vote on this nomination, the extra letters and questions seem like a meaningless endeavor and a waste of our time and resources. \u00a0 So, I\u2019m curious to see how my friends in the minority vote on Mr. Grasz\u2019s nomination today. If they vote against him for doing his job in in the Nebraska Attorney General\u2019s Office to defend Nebraska\u2019s statute related to partial-birth abortions, then all this back and forth with the ABA seems to have been pointless. \u00a0 If the minority ultimately votes against Mr. Grasz because of the rating the ABA gave him, then I\u2019d urge them to consider the ABA\u2019s rating of the two Fifth Circuit nominees from Texas. Both received a \u201cWell-Qualified\u201d rating. The ABA had no concerns regarding today\u2019s two Fifth Circuit nominees. They found that both would be able to act as circuit judges free from bias. Either these ratings matter to the Minority or they don\u2019t. \u00a0 The next nominee on today\u2019s agenda is James Ho for the Fifth Circuit. This week, I received a letter from Democrats on Committee asking me to postpone the vote on his nomination because the Department of Justice hasn\u2019t provided a legal memo Mr. Ho wrote in 2002 during his service as a line attorney in the critically important Office of Legal Counsel. \u00a0 The OLC essentially serves as the general counsel to the Executive Branch. The legal advice that OLC lawyers provide relate to the most pressing issues facing our nation, including our national security, and the legal advice they provide constitutes some of the \u201ccrown jewels\u201d of Executive Privilege and attorney-client privilege. Yesterday, I sent the Democrats on Committee a letter explaining my view on this, but I\u2019ll mention it here as well. \u00a0 First, Mr. Ho is not at liberty to decide whether or not to disclose the OLC memo. He wrote it for the Department of Justice and it\u2019s the Department\u2019s to share or to keep confidential. And the Department has declined to furnish the memo due to \u201csubstantial confidentiality interests.\u201d\u00a0 The Department also indicated that it \u201cneeds to protect the ability of attorneys within OLC to engage in candid internal discussion and avoid the chilling of deliberations that would result from disclosing such communications outside the Department.\u201d \u00a0 I agree. This isn\u2019t a partisan issue. The Committee has respected the Department\u2019s decision to not disclose OLC memos during both Republican and Democratic Administrations. As I said in my letter, I am concerned that requests for disclosure of OLC memoranda may simply be fishing expeditions with no apparent purpose beyond scoring political points. \u00a0 Mr. Ho is a very accomplished attorney who is unquestionably qualified to serve on the Fifth Circuit. He clerked for a judge on the Fifth Circuit and for a Supreme Court Justice. He served in the highly prestigious Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice, as Chief Counsel to Senator Cornyn on this Committee, and as Solicitor General of Texas. For the past seven years, he has been a renowned partner at the law firm of Gibson Dunn in Dallas. He will make an excellent addition to the Fifth Circuit. \u00a0 Justice Don Willett is also on today\u2019s agenda. He\u2019s served as a member of the Texas Supreme Court since 2005. He\u2019s been reelected twice by wide margins. Before serving on the Texas Supreme Court, Justice Willett served as Deputy Texas Attorney General for Legal Counsel and as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy in the United States Department of Justice. He\u2019s served each of these offices with distinction. \u00a0 I look forward to supporting all of these Circuit Court nominees today. \u00a0 We will also vote on 7 nominees to District Courts today. \u00a0 I\u2019ll now turn to Senator Feinstein for her remarks. \u00a0 -30-", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-statement-judiciary-committee-meeting-consider-appellate-court-nominees"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.176865004003048, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}