Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer called for a delay in confirming Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court while the FBI conducts an investigation into President Donald Trump's campaign, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
Speaking on the Senate floor a day after FBI Director James Comey confirmed that the agency has been probing since July possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the presidential race, Schumer said:
"It is the height of irony that Republicans held this Supreme Court seat open for nearly a calendar year while President Obama was in office, but are now rushing to fill the seat for a president whose campaign is under investigation by the FBI."
Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland last March after Justice Antonin Scalia's death, but Republicans refused to even hold a confirmation hearing for him, saying that a decision on a Supreme Court justice should wait until after the presidential election.
The New York Democratic senator said it was "unseemly to be moving forward so fast on confirming a Supreme Court Justice with a lifetime appointment" when "you can bet that if the shoe was on the other foot — and a Democratic president was under investigation by the FBI — that Republicans would be howling at the moon about filling a Supreme Court seat in such circumstances. After all, they stopped a president who wasn't under investigation from filling a seat with nearly a year left in his presidency."
Politico reported that the Democrats are united behind Schumer's stance but that it has almost no chance of convincing any GOP senators.
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