The following article by Aaron Blake was posted on the Washington Post website December 15, 2017:
President Trump’s U.S. District nominee Matthew S. Petersen could not answer routine law questions during a hearing on Dec. 13. (Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse/Twitter)
The brooding controversy over President Trump’s judicial picks spilled over Wednesday in an exchange between one of those nominees and a Republican senator who was clearly unhappy with the nominee’s lack of relevant experience. And the video has now gone viral.
Just after Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter urging reconsideration of two nominees — both were later pulled — fellow Judiciary Committee member John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) went after district court judge nominee Matthew Spencer Petersen as any prosecutor might: with a series of questions designed to make his point. The point: That Petersen doesn’t know things a federal judge ought to. Continue reading “That painful exchange between a Trump judicial pick and a GOP senator, annotated”