Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday called the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett “absurd” and a “sham,” accusing Republicans of trying to “steal” the seat in the midst of a presidential election.
“Today’s sham hearing – on a holiday, 22 days from Election Day, during a COVID-19 outbreak in the Judiciary Committee with a likely-exposed Chairman who won’t get tested – shows just how far the GOP will go to steal another Supreme Court seat & hand our courts over to extremists,” Mrs. Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, tweeted to her 6.2 million followers.
“This absurd hearing is happening today because Amy Coney Barrett is the last hope for a desperate, undemocratically overrepresented party trying to cling to power just a little longer, & impose the agenda of billionaires, giant corporations, & far-right extremists on our country,” she wrote in another tweet.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday kicked off a four-day confirmation hearing of Judge Barrett, which ranged from Democrats attacking the judge’s past stances on the Affordable Care Act to Republicans defending her Catholic faith against accusations of bias.
Mrs. Warren, who does not sit on the committee, penned an piece for Rolling Stone earlier in the day that claimed Judge Barrett was chosen by President Trump in order to complete a “decades-long assault on our judiciary by billionaires, giant corporations, and right-wing extremists to tilt the courts in their favor and against everyone else.”
“In 2016, Sen. McConnell and his Republican henchmen locked arms and insisted there could be no confirmation until after the next president had been elected and sworn in,” the senator wrote. “But in 2020, on the very same night that Justice Ginsburg passed, Mitch McConnell announced that he and Donald Trump would move immediately to name a new Supreme Court justice, despite the fact that there were only 46 days before the election and voting was already under way across the country.
“This kind of sleazy double-dealing is the last gasp of a desperate party that is undemocratically overrepresented in Congress and in the halls of power across our country,” she continued. “The last gasp of a corrupt Republican leadership, numb to its own hypocrisy, that doesn’t reflect the views of the majority of Americans or the values that we hold dear. The last gasp of a right-wing, billionaire-fueled party that wants to hold onto power a little longer in order to impose its extremist agenda on the entire country.”
Mrs. Warren concluded by arguing that “every option” should be on the table for Democrats to “restore the court’s credibility and integrity” and “expand our democracy” once they reclaim power.
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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