Tipsheet

The Left Tried To Torch This Possible SCOTUS Nominee And Got Clotheslined With The Facts

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  July 03, 2018 1:45 PM

Circuit Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett is a potential nominee to fill the vacancy that is going to be left by outgoing Justice Anthony Kennedy. She’s going to be torched. For starters, she’s been picked by Trump, which makes her an enemy of the state to liberals. Second, she’s Catholic. Yes, Senate Democrats had an issue with her faith during her confirmation hearing for the seventh circuit. With liberals gripped with fear over abortion rights, you bet the Catholic attacks are coming back. 

The Left is gunning for whomever Trump selects, and right now, the person of interest for left-wingers is Judge Barrett. Yet, in their initial attack, they’ve already been clotheslined by reality. Let’s start with the false claim that Judge Barrett has ties to the “hate group” Alliance Defending Freedom. It stems from that terrible confirmation hearing last fall, where Democrats grilled the scary, conservative, and uber-Catholic Barrett. The charge was Barrett didn’t fully vet ADF for its alleged support for sterilizing transgender people, or something. Former Sen. AL Franken (D-MN), who resigned in disgrace after he allegedly groped multiple women, lobbed the accusation. It’s pure crap (via National Review):

Franken parroted the Southern Poverty Law Center’s claim that ADF is a “hate group” and faulted Barrett for speaking to ADF’s Blackstone Fellowship program.

[…]

A has-been comic who has evidently lost his sense of irony, Franken faulted Barrett for failing to “vet” ADF even as he failed to vet SPLC’s attack on ADF. For example, Franken quoted and credited SPLC’s claim that ADF “has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of transgendered people abroad.” And he then adopted the charge as his own: “This is a group that calls for the sterilization of transgender people abroad.”

Franken’s claim is flatly false. If Franken or his staff had bothered to click SPLC’s supposedly supporting link, they would have discovered that the European Court of Human Rights case that SPLC was relying on was one that involved the vexing question whether and when government-issued documents should redefine a person’s biological sex to comport with the person’s gender identity.

Yet, MSNBC analyst decided to repeat the claims on air with host Steve Kornacki (via Free Beacon):


MSNBC political analyst Zerlina Maxwell said Monday that United States Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett has hate group ties, referring to the religious freedom legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom.

Maxwell said on MSNBC’s "Hardball" that Barrett is "very Catholic" and cited former Democratic Sen. Al Franken’s accusations against Barrett during a hearing last year. Franken declared ADF a "hate group" and asked why Barrett had ties to the group, accusing them of "call[ing] for the sterilization of transgender people abroad."

[…]

Nevertheless, Maxwell called ADF a "hate group," citing Franken's words as her only evidence.

"Amy Barnett [Barrett] went to Notre Dame, she is very Catholic," Maxwell said. "She had a famous moment with former Senator Al Franken during her hearings about how she spoke, essentially, to a hate group without really understanding the full context there."

Today, the left wing Center for American Progress tried to smear Barrett as anti-worker (and possibly racist) for siding against an African-American worker in a discrimination suit against AutoZone. There’s only one problem: Barrett wasn’t even on the district court when this case was decided. You can read the opinion here. Amy Barrett’s name is nowhere to be seen. Charles Cooke made a meal of this:

Yeah, way to step on the rake, fellas.  

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