Joe Biden’s vetting process for judicial nominees is either ridiculously bad or he just doesn’t care how bad his nominees are as long as they check off the right diversity boxes.
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Last month, Joe Biden nominated Maine Superior Court Judge Julia Lipez to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. I suspect she wasn’t nominated because of her record because just last year she reduced the sentence of Michael Smith, a man who molested two young girls, aged four and nine, by half.
According to the Lewiston Sun-Journal, Judge Lipez suspended half of Smith’s 12-year prison sentence and remarked during the sentencing that Smith is “a person who has a lot of good in him.”
Sen. John Kennedy expertly called her out on Thursday.
“Mr. Smith molested a 4-year-old girl, didn’t he?” Kennedy asked her.
“Senator, he was convicted after trial of unlawful sexual contact under Maine law,” she responded.
“That’s a nice way of putting it,” Kennedy mocked.
Kennedy then asked about the nine-year-old, and Lipez responded with the same lame remark.
“Senator, again, he was convicted of unlawful sexual contact against two children,” Lipez told him. “In that case, I did impose the sentence the state requested.”
After describing what Smith did to the two girls, he noted, “Now where I come from, we call that sexual abuse,” Kennedy responded. “You can pretty it up all you want to, judge.”
Kennedy then quoted Lipez’s own remarks from Smith’s sentencing. “These are your words, not mine,” Kennedy pointed out first. “‘What I can say’ — you said — ‘is that this is a very tragic situation of a person who has a lot of good in him,’ a lot of good in him, ‘having done a very… reprehensible thing to two young children, causing extreme damage.’ Did I read that correctly?”
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Lipez tried to deflect by pointing out, again, that she sentenced Smith in accordance with the state’s recommendations, but Kennedy wasn’t letting her get away with avoiding the question.
“Did I read that — your quotation correctly?”
She eventually admitted that it was “a portion” of what she had said.
“But the words I read, are they correct?”
“That’s what was reported in the paper, Senator. I have not seen a transcript of the sentencing.”
“I bet the victims remember, judge,” Kennedy replied. “And then you handed down a sentence. You gave Mr. Smith 12 years, but you suspended six of ’em, didn’t you?”
A monster molested 4- and 9-year-old girls.
Lipez called him “a person who has a lot of good in him” and suspended half of his jail sentence, giving him only 6 years behind bars.
Pres. Biden wants to put Lipez on the court of appeals for life. pic.twitter.com/K4YcbZJIvW
— John Kennedy (@SenJohnKennedy) June 20, 2024
How does Joe Biden get away with nominating people like this to the federal bench? It’s because his party won’t stop him. Heck, Maine Sen. Angus King, a Democrat who is registered as an Independent, said of Lipez that he’s “never seen a stronger candidate for a judicial position.”
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Really?
Joe Biden’s Supreme Court pick, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, was similarly criticized for having a pro-pedophile record. Judge Jackson once handed down the bare minimum sentence to a man guilty of sexually torturing babies. Her sentencing record shows she consistently gave sentences that were nearly 60% shorter than the national average for those possessing child porn and nearly 50% shorter for distributors. Worse yet, the Biden White House was aware of her controversial record and withheld information from Republican senators.
Monsters like this, who have a soft spot for child predators, have no business on the federal bench. Yet Joe Biden does it because the Democrats, who have a majority in the U.S. Senate, let him.