Missouri’s junior senator says he has no interest in a U.S. Supreme Court appointment. U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R) says while he appreciates President Donald Trump naming him to a list of potential nominees, he will stay in the Senate.
Missouri Senator Josh Hawley (2020 photo courtesy of Senator Hawley’s office)
“As I said to the president, it’s not an honor I will take him up on,” Hawley says. “There’s a lot of great folks who would be wonderful on the Supreme Court, and my role in this process is going to be to fight to confirm pro-constitution justices to that court and judges to every other federal court.”
Hawley, who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, says Missourians elected him to fight for them in Washington. During a Thursday interview with Missourinet, Hawley also says the president is trying to reform the process for Supreme Court nominees. He says President Trump inherited a process from previous GOP presidents “that frankly didn’t work very well.”
“And you can just look at the results of what we’ve seen from this court (U.S. Supreme Court) to see that, I mean over the years Republicans have appointed justice after justice who have not adhered to the Constitution and who have not frankly upheld the rule of law,” says Hawley.
Hawley unseated U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) in 2018.
The “Washington Post” reported this week that President Trump is challenging Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to release his own list of prospective nominees. The newspaper quotes President Trump as saying the next president could nominate “one, two, three and even four Supreme Court justices.”
One other Missourian made the president’s list this week: U.S. District Judge Sarah Pitlyk, who serves Missouri’s Eastern District. She also served as a law clerk to then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Listen to interview:
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