One of President Trump’s personal lawyers now has a federal judgeship for life, and it’s thanks to multiple Senate Democrats being absent.
Justin Smith, 41, was confirmed by the Senate Tuesday in a 48–43 vote, with every Democrat voting against his nomination, while all but one Republican, Lisa Murkowski, voted for him. Nine senators missed the vote: Michael Bennet, Kevin Cramer, John Curtis, Angus King, Ben Ray Luján, Cynthia Lummis, Bernie Sanders, Raphael Warnock, and Mitch McConnell.
Bennet, King, Luján, Sanders, and Warnock all caucus with the Democratic Party, and if they had been present to cast a “no” vote, Smith’s vote would have been blocked in a 48–48 tie. Smith will now sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, overseeing federal district court appeals in Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.
Smith represented Trump in his presidential immunity case before the Supreme Court and worked on his case to have the Supreme Court overturn the sexual assault and defamation case against the president brought by E. Jean Carroll. Despite being nominated to the federal bench in March, Smith continued representing Trump in Carroll’s case.
In his confirmation hearings in April, Smith refused to say who won the 2020 presidential election, and refused to answer questions about whether he would recuse himself from any cases involving Trump, sparring with Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal.
Smith is now the third of Trump’s personal lawyers to be appointed as a federal judge, and the second to be confirmed. He’ll join Emil Bove, who, while working for the Justice Department in Trump’s first term, told his fellow federal prosecutors to disobey court orders and say “fuck you” to judges who ruled against them.
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on the Senate floor Tuesday that Smith’s conflicts of interest raised “serious questions.”
“These are lifetime appointments to federal judgeships—lifetime appointments which have to be given to people who have been carefully scrutinized. We have not done that when it comes to Mr. Smith,” Durbin said.
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