On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a confirmation hearing for a number of judicial nominees. Among them was Dale Ho, nominated to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. Throughout the hearing, Republican Senators expressed concern over Ho's prior partisan rhetoric, especially on social media.
WATCH: Sen. Ted Cruz's complete grilling of Biden nominee Dale Ho to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York.
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) December 1, 2021
Cruz: “Your record reflects that same pattern of finding someone who has been an extreme partisan, who has been a radical...“ pic.twitter.com/IXmVRvAX51
The Hill reported:
Ho, whose Twitter account is now set to private, expressed remorse throughout the hearing for his past social media commentary and insisted it was not reflective of how he conducts himself professionally.
“I do very much regret the tone that I have taken on social media from time to time,” Ho told Kennedy. “I know that I’ve crossed the line from time to time.”
While he admitted to some of his prior statements, he denied saying other things he previously stated on the record:
But Dale Ho made those radical comments on the record in the New York Times last year!https://t.co/1htucDTw0h#DarkMoneyDaleHo pic.twitter.com/mRfffPOxnn
— JCN (@judicialnetwork) December 1, 2021
But partisan rhetoric is not the only concern with Ho. He also has deep connections to liberal "dark money" groups whose goal is to fundamentally transform the American political system.
. @RuthlessPodcast is exactly right:
— JCN (@judicialnetwork) December 2, 2021
Dale Ho’s nomination to the federal bench is giving liberal dark-money interests exactly what they paid for. If Ho gets on the federal bench, he will deliver the radical policies the Left demands. pic.twitter.com/scayLAsKAt
Carrie Severino wrote for the National Review:
Ho comes straight from the ranks of liberal dark-money interests, for which he has worked for most of his career after graduating from law school. He spent over four years working at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and since 2013 has been at the ACLU, where he is the director of the its Voting Rights Project. . .
Not surprisingly, dark-money groups including People for the American Way and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights have been singling out Ho for praise. Demand Justice, which began as a project of Arabella Advisors’ Sixteen Thirty Fund, a dark money behemoth, has him on its own Supreme Court short list and has been advertising him on social media. Demand Justice is already well represented in the Biden administration. Both the president’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, and his point person on judicial nominees, Paige Herwig, used to work for Demand Justice.
Senators should reject the extreme partisanship of Dale Ho and other judicial nominees like him.