The One Question Trump’s Judicial Picks Refuse to Answer

Mr. Toobin is a contributing Opinion writer and the author of “The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy.”

A vivid illustration of the way that President Trump has degraded the nation’s political discourse will be on view when the Senate Judiciary Committee holds its next hearing on Wednesday on his nominees to the federal courts. As has become his custom, Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, will ask prospective judges virtually the same simple question and will, in all likelihood, receive virtually the same astonishing answer in return.

In one recent enactment of the ritual, Mr. Blumenthal asked Andrew Davis, a nominee to the Western District Court in Texas, the question, which concerned the presidential election of 2020: “Who won the popular vote in 2020?”

“Senator, in 2020, President Biden was certified and served four years as president,” Mr. Davis said.

The other witnesses on the panel, all nominees to federal judgeships, answered the same way. They said Mr. Biden was “certified” the winner in 2020, but none would acknowledge either that Mr. Biden actually won the election or that Mr. Trump lost it. Since Mr. Blumenthal and others began asking versions of the same question, 37 and counting of President Trump’s nominees to the federal bench have recited the “certified” catechism or merely stated that Mr. Biden “served” as president, thus refusing to state or by extension acknowledge the fact of Mr. Biden’s victory in 2020.

Ordinarily, Mr. Blumenthal is one of the more mild-mannered members of the Senate, but he has begun to respond to the stonewalling with contempt and ridicule. “Don’t you feel kind of like monkeys or puppets here?” he asked one panel. “You can choose not to answer the question,” he said another time, “but please don’t insult my intelligence by asking me to accept that answer.”

There’s no mystery about what’s going on. Nothing is closer to Mr. Trump’s heart than the malign fantasy that he won the 2020 election. As recently as March 15, he posted on Truth Social, “Our Country was unnecessarily RANSACKED by the United States Supreme Court, which has become little more than a weaponized and unjust Political Organization. … They wouldn’t even call out The Rigged Presidential Election of 2020 … and now, with time, it has been conclusively proven to be stolen.”

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Jeffrey Toobin is a former assistant U.S. attorney who writes about the intersection of law and politics. He is the author of “The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court,” “The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy” and other books.

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