Rand Paul Reportedly ‘Not Happy’ With Mitch McConnell Over Failed Nomination of Anti-Abortion Judge: ‘McConnell Is to Blame’

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Sen. Rand Paul is discontented with Sen. Minority Leader and fellow Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell for not consulting him about an arrangement the latter had with President Joe Biden.

Last month the Louisville Courier-Journal reported that Biden was preparing to nominate a conservative, anti-abortion lawyer named Chad Meredith to a judgeship in the Eastern District of Kentucky. Later, Slate reported that in exchange for nominating Meredith, McConnell agreed to sign off on Biden’s U.S. attorney appointments in the state.

Word of the arrangement outraged Democrats, who said appointing Meredith to a lifetime position on the federal bench was not worth securing the appointments of federal prosecutors who could simply be fired by the next president.

A White House email shows that Biden was going to formally announce the nomination on June 24, but on that day the Supreme Court issued its decision overturning a constitutional right to abortion. In response, the White House held back the nomination, which was in limbo until Friday.

That’s when Rand Paul thwarted Meredith’s nomination.

Key in this drama is the Senate’s use of “blue slips” for the appointment of district court judges and other federal appointments. Per Senate custom, a senator may refuse to submit a favorable blue slip for a given nominee to a federal position in his or her state. This effectively sinks the nomination.

The New York Times reported on Friday there would be no Meredith nomination because Paul would not sign off on it. In the story, McConnell claimed he didn’t have a deal with Biden, but rather the nomination “was a personal friendship gesture.”

The Times didn’t say why Paul opposed it and said McConnell didn’t know why,  but he “raised the possibility that Mr. Paul might have believed that it was his turn to put forward a judicial candidate.”

CNN’s Manu Raju discovered the reason on Monday and reported that Paul is “not happy” with McConnell because wasn’t consulted about the potential nomination first.

Rand Paul not happy with McConnell blaming him for Biden pulling back from picking Chad Meredith to a district judgeship. “McConnell is to blame for tanking” him. He said McConnell had not conslulted with him on the pick for a KY judge, as is customary.

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 18, 2022

“McConnell is to blame for tanking him,” Paul said “And so we simply said that we’re not against Meredith, but McConnell is going to at least have to discuss it with his other state senator.”

There are more than 60 judicial vacancies on federal district courts, many of which are due to the blue slip tradition. In 2018, McConnell scrapped the custom for appeals court nominees, thus allowing Donald Trump to appoint more judges. Democrats have so far continued the practice for district nominations.

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