Rand Paul Says McConnell Made Backdoor Deal With Biden Over Judge Pick
Darian Douraghy
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Will Republicans in the Senate eventually unite in their effort to oppose the Biden administration? That may take a while — a new report revealed that Senators Rand Paul & Mitch McConnell (R-KY) are at odds after an argument over who ended a potential nomination of an anti-abortion attorney to the federal bench.
Senator Paul accused the senate minority leader of doing a backdoor “secret deal” with the Biden regime.
“McConnell’s to blame for tanking this because he tried to do it secretly [and] Democrats caught wind up in the state,” Paul said Monday when speaking on the failed nomination of Chad Meredith as a district court judge in the Bluegrass State.
“We never heard about it from McConnell’s office,” Paul added. “And his people simply said, ‘You can’t do this but we can.’ You know, ‘We’re so powerful, we can do whatever we want.’”
The White House sent out a representative to blame Paul for the incident.
“In considering potential District Court nominees, the White House learned that Senator Rand Paul will not return a blue slip on Chad Meredith,” the White House spokesman said, referring to what the New York Post describes as a tradition of senators backing the nomination of judges from their home state. “Therefore, the White House will not nominate Mr. Meredith.”
McConnell blamed Paul as well, telling reporters his opposition was “just utterly pointless.”
“The net result of this is it has prevented me from getting my kind of judge out of a liberal Democratic president,” he said to the New York Times Friday.
The senate minority leader also reportedly claimed Biden’s promise to nominate Meredith was “a personal friendship gesture.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters last week that he inquired about what McConnell had promised the White House in exchange for Biden nominating Meredith, giving credence to Senator Paul’s side of the story.
“They didn’t have a specific answer,” he told Politico.
McConnell said that he thinks Paul just wants to make his own nomination for a position on the federal bench.
“The president would not have been taking a recommendation from Rand Paul, I can assure you,” he reportedly told the Times.
“We have no reason to be opposed to Chad Meredith, other than we want at least the courtesy of … the minority leader thinking that he’s not so important that he doesn’t have to talk to his fellow state senator,” Paul explained to reporters. “The left ended up hating it, but also even his colleagues — myself — weren’t too happy about him doing it without having any discussion.”
Paul has been no stranger in standing up to the establishment wings of both the Republican and Democrat parties. The Kentucky senator has stood on the opposite side of McConnell on plenty of other occasions, including on his recently introduced balanced budget amendment. The proposed legislation was blocked by Democrats along with McConnell and several other Republicans belonging to the GOP establishment.
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