‘COMPLETELY INCONSISTENT’

Senators Blast Trump Judicial Pick’s Election Evasion ‘Script’

Another Trump nominee declined to answer who won the 2020 presidential election.

Democratic senators called out a Trump-nominated judge for repeatedly refusing to admit the president lost the 2020 election.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor, whom Trump nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday to help determine whether he was qualified for the job. But his responses to questions about the 2020 election left Democrats doubtful.

When asked by Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal to identify the winner of that election, Traynor balked, as have several other Trump judicial nominees when confronted about that topic, which the president continues to lie about.

“Senator, this issue has become a question of political controversy,” Traynor began.

Blumenthal shot back moments later: “It’s ‘political controversy’ only because the president refuses to accept the results of the 2020 election. I’m asking you as a matter of fact: Who won the 2020 election?”

Traynor, like previous Trump nominees under scrutiny, invoked Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s answer during her 2022 confirmation hearings to try to sidestep the question. Jackson wrote then that “it would be inappropriate for me to publicly weigh in [on] any subject of political debate,” but added that she “had private conversations on a wide variety of topics.”

“As Justice Jackson stated in response to questions in the record, it is not appropriate to engage in discussion regarding that,” the North Dakota judge said.

“So, you’re going to use the same script that other nominees have used before this panel to avoid the question?” Blumenthal responded, at which point Traylor again referred to that “precedent.”

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Blumenthal asked again: “As a matter of fact, who got more votes in 2020?”

Once more, Traynor declined to say that Joe Biden won the Electoral College, as well as the popular vote by a margin of over 7 million.

Blumenthal told Traynor, “You’re adopting a script that has been dictated to you by the White House.”

California Sen. Adam Schiff also pressed Traynor on the same topic, to no avail.

“As a sitting judge,” Traynor maintained, “it is not appropriate for a judicial nominee to engage in discussion regarding a matter of political controversy.”

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Schiff suggested Traynor was a hypocrite, pointing to how he defended his 2024 decision to join other Trump-appointed judges in boycotting the hiring of Columbia University law clerks due to how the university responded to pro-Palestine demonstrators. In a voluntary letter to the school’s president, Traynor and company called the school an “incubator of bigotry” that spread antisemitism.

“This is completely inconsistent with your involvement in the whole Colombia controversy,” Schiff said. “Nobody asked you to write that letter. You took this upon yourself... to insert yourself into that. But you’re saying here you can’t answer a simple question about who won the 2020 presidential election because it would somehow implicate you in controversy. I’m sorry, there is no way to square those two things.”

Even Republican Sen. John Kennedy questioned Traynor about that letter.

“To do that as a private lawyer is one thing,” Kennedy said. “To ​do it as a sitting federal judge, it’s quite another. And I just don’t think it’s a ⁠good thing.”

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