Jay Sekulow Archives - Alabama Today

Wee hours U.S. Senate drama: GOP colleagues on the floor battle Tommy Tuberville blockade

Ashley Murray, Arizona Mirror WASHINGTON — After a marathon day and late-night vote to avert a Thanksgiving government shutdown, four U.S. Senate Republicans held the floor until the wee hours Thursday, urging their Alabama colleague to lift his months-long objections to hundreds of U.S. military nominations. Sens. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Todd Young of Indiana, Joni Ernst of Iowa, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina asked for unanimous consent on two stalled nominees and spoke on the matter until nearly 4 a.m. Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah objected to both on behalf of GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, speaking at length in defense of the minority party’s right to block nominations as leverage and about his own opposition to the Pentagon’s abortion policy that Tuberville is protesting. Lee’s objections meant the nominations remained stalled. This was the second time Tuberville’s Republican colleagues brought nominees to the floor to challenge the Alabama senator’s tactic, showing how frustration has bubbled to the surface in his own party. Pentagon officials warn that Tuberville’s freeze on promotions is disrupting the military’s chain of command. Until Nov. 1, only Democratic senators had asserted opposition on the floor. Tuberville has objected to unanimous voice vote approval of military generals and flag officer promotions since early 2023, and now Senate Republicans are on the defense against a Democratic-led resolution that could allow the chamber to hold roll call votes on the nominees en masse, potentially saving weeks to months of precious Senate floor time. Here’s what the senators had to say early Thursday morning: Sullivan Prior to speaking out against Tuberville on the floor this month, the Alaska senator joined him in collecting cloture petition signatures to bring top generals, including the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the floor for successful votes. But Sullivan, a colonel in the U.S. Marines Corps Reserve, said Thursday that he and fellow GOP lawmakers who are now protesting Tuberville’s strategy have “received hundreds of text messages, emails from military families saying, ‘Thank you for having our back. Somebody has our back.’” “So we told them, we’re gonna do that, as we’re moving into Thanksgiving, my colleagues and I, we’re gonna keep our word to our military.” “During the last two weeks, we’ve all worked hard together. Sen. Tuberville is here, Sen. Lee’s on the floor. We’re all working hard trying to resolve this. We have ideas … But the backlog grows. Right now, when the Armed Services (Committee) reports out the next batch of military (nominees), it will be 450 one-, two-, three- and four-star generals.” The latest figures from the Pentagon state 359 nominees are stalled, and the list could grow to between 650 and 850 by year’s end if Tuberville continues his blockade. “This is a huge readiness challenge and a huge moral challenge,” Sullivan said. Tuberville was present at times but did not speak on the floor during the nearly four-hour period. Ernst The Iowa senator said Thursday morning she “led on the effort to overturn this (Biden administration) policy.” Ernst, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Iowa Army National Guard, twice attempted but failed to insert language into this year’s annual defense authorization bill to ban the Pentagon’s recent abortion policy. “So, again, I am pro-military and pro-life,” she said. “I also do not relish that I am standing on the floor this (morning) as we try to bring these nominations forward, but I understand the national security risks that are out there and the detriment to readiness as we continue to hold over 450 of the finest men and women that have served their nation honorably under the flag of our nation and our uniform.” “So I will go through one by one. I have a binder full of nominees, and I do hope our colleague from Alabama will allow us to bring them up one by one for a voice vote.” Graham Graham suggested a legal strategy against the Biden administration as a way for Tuberville to change course and smooth out the military’s chain of command this year. “How do you right wrongs? You don’t create another wrong. I want to right the wrong of having abortion paid for by public taxpayer dollars from the defense coffers. I think it not only violates the Hyde Amendment, it’s just bad policy. Count me in, Coach (Tuberville), I’m with you on that, Mike (Lee). You say it’s illegal. I tend to agree with you. Go to court.” “One way you right a wrong in America if you think a law is broken, you actually bring a lawsuit, and I think we found a way talking to (attorney) Jay Sekulow to bring a lawsuit challenging the defense policy of President Biden using taxpayer dollars to pay for transportation costs from DoD funds to perform abortions,” Graham said. Sekulow is chief counsel of the Christian-based American Center for Law and Justice, and specializes in religious liberty and anti-abortion litigation, according to his website. The Biden administration and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin maintain the policy is legal, and the Department of Justice in 2022 delivered an opinion concluding the policy does not violate the Hyde Amendment. The policy, announced in February, grants service members time off and travel reimbursement when seeking an abortion in states where it remains unrestricted. The Pentagon policy was authorized after last year’s landmark Supreme Court ruling. Roughly 80,000 active-duty female service members are stationed in states where legislatures enacted full or partial bans, according to RAND. Young The Indiana senator asked to take up and confirm by unanimous consent two nominees Thursday morning, Capt. Kurtis A. Mole to rise to a rear admiral of the Navy, and Capt. Thomas J. Dickinson also for a promotion to rear admiral. Lee objected both times. “There are now tens, tens of Americans watching us on C-SPAN 2, captivated I know by the presentation this (morning),” Young said. “I think they’re perhaps divided. Some may look upon these proceedings and think what

Donald Trump names 2 lawyers to impeachment defense team, one from Alabama

Former president Donald Trump announced a new impeachment legal defense team Sunday, one day after it was revealed that he had parted ways with an earlier set of attorneys with just over a week to go before his Senate trial. The two lawyers representing him will be David Schoen, a criminal defense lawyer with offices in Alabama and New York, and Bruce Castor, a former county prosecutor in Pennsylvania. Both issued statements through a Trump adviser saying that they were honored to take the job. “The strength of our Constitution is about to be tested like never before in our history. It is strong and resilient. A document written for the ages, and it will triumph over partisanship yet again, and always,” said Castor, who served as district attorney for Montgomery County, outside of Philadelphia, from 2000 to 2008. The announcement Sunday was intended to promote a sense of stability surrounding the Trump defense team as his impeachment trial nears. The former president has struggled to hire and retain attorneys willing to represent him against charges that he incited the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, which happened when a mob of loyalists stormed Congress as lawmakers met Jan. 6 to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory. That’s a contrast from his first impeachment trial, when Trump’s high-profile team of attorneys included Alan Dershowitz, one of the best-known criminal defense lawyers in the country, as well as White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and Jay Sekulow, who has argued cases before the Supreme Court. Trump’s team had initially announced that Butch Bowers, a South Carolina lawyer, would lead his legal team after an introduction from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. But that team unraveled over the weekend due to differences over legal strategy. One person familiar with their thinking said Bowers and another South Carolina lawyer, Deborah Barbier, left the team because Trump wanted them to use a defense that relied on allegations of election fraud, and the lawyers were not willing to do so. The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the situation and requested anonymity. Republicans and aides to Trump, the first president to be impeached twice in American history, have made clear that they intend to make a simple argument in the trial: Trump’s trial, scheduled for the week of Feb. 8, is unconstitutional because he is no longer in office. “The Democrats’ efforts to impeach a president who has already left office is totally unconstitutional and so bad for our country,” Trump adviser Jason Miller has said. Many legal scholars, however, say there is no bar to an impeachment trial despite Trump having left the White House. One argument is that state constitutions that predate the U.S. Constitution allowed impeachment after officials left office. The Constitution’s drafters also did not specifically bar the practice. Castor, a Republican who was the elected district attorney of Pennsylvania’s third-most populated county, decided against charging Cosby in a 2004 sexual encounter. He ran for the job again in 2015, and his judgment in the Cosby case was a key issue used against him by the Democrat who defeated him. Castor has said that he personally thought Cosby should have been arrested, but that the evidence wasn’t strong enough to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. In 2004, Castor ran for state attorney general unsuccessfully. In 2016, he became the top lieutenant to the state’s embattled attorney general — Kathleen Kane, a Democrat — as she faced charges of leaking protected investigative information to smear a rival and lying to a grand jury about it. She was convicted, leaving Castor as the state’s acting attorney general for a few days. Schoen met with financier Jeffrey Epstein about joining his defense team on sex trafficking charges just days before Epstein killed himself in a New York jail. In an interview with the Atlanta Jewish Times last year, Schoen said he had also been approached by Trump associate Roger Stone before Stone’s trial about being part of the team and that he was was later retained to handle his appeal. Trump commuted Stone’s sentence and then pardoned him. Schoen maintained in the interview that the case against Stone was “very unfair and politicized.” Neither Schoen nor Castor returned phone messages seeking comment Sunday evening. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.