On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held its first in a series of eight “Arctic Frost Accountability” subcommittee hearings, which are ostensibly intended to provide oversight of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The real purpose, though, is to provide Republican senators with more camera time to relitigate the results of that election and the January 6 insurrection that followed.

In his opening remarks, Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, confronted his Republican colleagues over “their undying fealty to the president’s abnormal behavior” and “his attempt to whitewash history.” But he also called out another group of people who have been doing the same of late: Trump’s judicial nominees.

“Have you seen the contortions that these nominees have gone through when they’re asked the basic question, ‘Who won the election in 2020?’” Durbin asked. “They won’t answer. They go through these painful contortions. They can’t answer it because it’s an article of faith: If you’re loyal to Trump, you never accept the premise that he lost an election.”

Durbin is referring to the fact that, to date, all 37 of Trump’s second-term judicial nominees have refused to answer simple questions related to the 2020 election and the insurrection. Instead, nominees typically state only that President Joe Biden “was certified” as the victor, and they claim that as nominees, it would be “inappropriate” for them to say that the Capitol was attacked on January 6 (which they describe as a “political controversy”). 

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