Grassley Speaks to Media Following Kennedy Retirement
(Audio/Transcript)
WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa spoke to members of the media outside of his office in Washington, D.C., following the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. A transcription is available below and audio is available here. Grassley also released a statement earlier today and tweeted about Kennedy’s retirement.
TRANSCRIPTION
Grassley: I hope I don’t get questions that ask me to speculate, because I am not going to speculate on anything. First of all, I think we ought to recognize the outstanding service of Justice Kennedy over three decades to the Supreme Court. I had an opportunity to vote for him, I believe in the year of ’86. We want to complement him and wish him the best and I am sure he is going to serve the judiciary still in some capacity even though he is off the Supreme Court now. But he is an outstanding person of intellect and hard-working person—he has written a lot of outstanding opinions. So then, the next step is that we have to wait for the President to make a decision. I don’t have any idea of who that is, but we do know what the President has said in the past, that probably nominees would be coming off of a certain list that he put forth. I think that it would be better to say that that would be the type of person that he might select. And we’ll just have to wait then ‘til it comes up here, but I would expect that we would have somebody that would have a great respect for the rule of law. A great respect for stare decisis we would have somebody who is going to have judicial temperament, that would leave his own personal views out of it and move on from that point.
Q: In 2016, you supported what Senator McConnell did in delaying the nomination or consideration of Merrick Garland because it was close to Presidential election, now we are close to a midterm election. Why not wait until after the midterms when a third of the Senate will be sworn in?
Grassley: I think Biden was pretty clear on that. That Biden rule applied to presidential years and the other thing would be, if you remember back in 2010, I believe it was, that we had a midterm election and Kagan was approved for the Supreme Court. So I think that we’ve got plenty of precedent when to have appointments to the Supreme Court and when not to.
Q: When will you have confirmation hearings?
Grassley: I don’t know.
Q: But can you say that you can have them done by the fall?
Grassley: It depends on when the President gets the nomination up here.
Q: Can you talk about a potential shift in the balance of the court, sir?
Grassley: I can’t speak to that because I don’t know who he is going to appoint.
Q: Do you think it should be a moderate to replace Kennedy since he was also a considered a moderate on the court?
Grassley: I think I expressed that by–the President was elected with the supposition that he would appoint a certain type of person to the Supreme Court. And he’s been very clear on it and I would expect him to keep by what he promised the electorate before he was elected.
Q: Given that Democrats have said that he shouldn’t do this before Election Day, do you expect any support at all from your Democratic colleagues as you go through this process?
Grassley: I think that it’s very clear when we might fill certain vacancies and when you won’t. One is the Biden rule and the other one is what do we have precedent for? We got plenty of precedent that people are appointed during midterm election years.
Q: Were you surprised by the timing of the announcement?
Grassley: No, because I think that this is usually the time, in fact, if you were talking to me twelve months ago, you would have speculated ‘is someone going to leave the Supreme Court?’ because this is about the time it happens.
Q: Do you want a justice who will overturn Roe?
Grassley: I want a justice who is going to be very independent of any personal views that they have on anything and are going to respect the Constitution and the rule of law and things of that nature.
Q: Does that include Roe?
Grassley: What we’re talking about is people that are going to look at the facts of the case and apply the law and the Constitution to those facts.
Q: Senator Grassley, have you made any recommendations to the White House about a potential Kennedy successor?
Grassley: No, I haven’t because, see, I would have only had two hours to do that.
Q: But in anticipation, because Republicans have been anticipating this for a while.
Grassley: No, I wouldn’t do anything in anticipation of it because I would have been doing it for the last twelve months and I would have been doing a lot twelve months ago right now.
Q: Senator have you heard from the White House, how did you find out?
Grassley: I was doing a television program with Iowa television people and somebody, I think with WOI or WHO-TV said ‘just got a communication that Kennedy is retiring, and what do you think of that?’ And in fact I didn’t believe it, so I said are you telling me something that you’re supposing or does it actually exist? He says ‘I got a letter here that says that!’
Q: Has the White House reached out to you since then and do you anticipate – have you gotten a sense of when they might announce a nominee?
Grassley: No, I don’t, I have had no conversation with the White House on this.
Q: What about with the Democrats?
Grassley: No, you’re the first ones I’ve had conversation with, thank you all.
END TRANSCRIPTION
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