Joe Sonka of the Louisville Courier-Journal has more details on the possible judicial nomination by Biden of a corrupt anti-abortion Federalist lawyer to the Eastern District Court. I say now “possible” because it was set to happen on June 24th. Yes, the same day that the SCOTUS struck down Roe. Someone leaked to Sonka that there is an email sent by President Biden to Governor Andy Beshear on June 23rd about Biden’s to announce Chad Meredith’s nomination on June 24th.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A White House email to Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear sent the afternoon of June 23 announced that President Joe Biden planned to nominate anti-abortion Republican Chad Meredith for federal judge in the state's eastern district the very next day.
But the very next day was June 24, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the federal constitutional right to abortion — effectively banning abortion in Kentucky because of its trigger law.
Meredith's nomination — which hadn't been revealed to the public — was not announced or submitted by the White House.
However, there is no indication it has been rescinded.
The undated email, sent by White House aide Kathleen M. Marshall at 4:16 p.m. Eastern, was obtained by The Courier Journal last week.
It stated: "To be nominated tomorrow:… Stephen Chad Meredith: candidate for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky."
Beshear has said he was told last week of Meredith's coming nomination. Although his office wouldn't disclose the date of that notification, The Courier Journal has established the email was sent June 23.
Emphasis is mine.
I know there are people on Daily Kos who will say, “Well, it didn’t happen, so why all the outrage?” Because it was going to happen folks, except for that little event of abortion rights being eliminated by the SCOTUS. And there are three things that make this move by Biden so repugnant.
First, Biden is saying to the women of Kentucky, “Tough shit ladies. Deal with the consequence of having one of your essential rights taken away from you. I have to placate Mitch McConnell.” As a man who lives in Kentucky, I’m pissed off by this move. I cannot imagine how angry and hurtful this is to any woman in Kentucky who needs to terminate her pregnancy.
Second, Chad Meredith was the lawyer who helped push through former Governor Matt Bevin’s pardons scheme. For those who are not aware of this, Matt Bevin has been accused of doing a pay for play pardon scheme with several of the violent criminals he pardoned. And Bevin pardoned murderers, rapists, and child molestors.
FRANKFORT, Ky. — The mother was at home preparing cheese sticks and a milkshake when she got the call. On the other line, a prosecutor had surprising news about the man who had been convicted of repeatedly sexually assaulting her child and sentenced last year to 23 years in prison.
In one of his last acts in office, the outgoing governor of Kentucky, Matt Bevin, had weighed in on the case. Citing a lack of physical evidence and a “sloppy” investigation, Mr. Bevin issued an unconditional pardon. The man, Micah Schoettle, 41, a close relative of the girl, walked out of prison.
“I just kept saying, ‘How? How? How?’” recalled the mother, who asked not to be named to protect the identity of her teenage daughter, who said she was 9 when the assaults began. “He spent less time in prison than he did molesting my child.”
In one case, Mr. Bevin released a man who was serving a 15-year sentence for sodomizing a teenage boy at a party in 2014.
The man, Dayton Jones, now 25, had pleaded guilty alongside three other young men, who together were accused of using a sex toy in the assault and then sharing video of the incident on social media. The boy, who was unconscious at the time, later had to have lifesaving surgery because of injuries he sustained in the attack, prosecutors said.
While the other defendants implicated Mr. Jones, he was not seen on the video. “It was not possible he could have been there doing this,” Mr. Bevin said in the interview. “There was no evidence showing that he was.”
But Jon Heck, a special prosecutor in the case who said he had not been contacted by Mr. Bevin’s office, said there was plenty of evidence: Independent witnesses told the police that Mr. Jones had assaulted the boy, Mr. Heck said, and prosecutors had obtained texts from Mr. Jones in which he acknowledged being part of the assault.
“There was no question he was guilty,” Mr. Heck said.
Turns out the Mr. Jones grandfather has some money, and there is an allegation that the elder jones made a hefty contribution to the reelection campaign of Governor Matt Bevin. And to show that money and influence played a role in other pardons, feast your eyes on this:
In one case, Elizabeth Stakelbeck, a friend of Mr. Bevin’s sister, was pardoned after being convicted in a 2013 plot to hire a hit man to kill her ex-husband and his new wife. Mr. Bevin’s sister had testified on her behalf in a related case, telling the court that her friend was a “changed person.”
A would be killer is set free, and what about an actual murderer?
LONDON, Ky. — After more than six hours of deliberation, a jury Wednesday found Patrick Baker — the man pardoned by then-Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin — guilty of murdering a drug dealer during a robbery seven years ago…
The verdict vindicates the federal government’s decision to essentially retry Baker for the crime Bevin excised, which is permitted under U.S. Justice Department rules to correct an injustice or corrupt result.
Neither Bevin nor the pardon was mentioned during Baker’s 10-day trial — Boom barred either from being mentioned to the jury — but the verdict repudiates Bevin’s claim the evidence was “sketchy” against Baker in the slaying of Mills, 29, during a robbery at Mills' home in the Knox County community of Stinking Creek.
In what experts say was the first federal trial of a defendant pardoned by a governor, federal prosecutors convinced the jury that Baker murdered Mills during a conspiracy to rob him of oxycodone pills and cash.
“At its core, this case was about one thing: Patrick Baker’s role in the death of Donald Mills,” Carlton Shier, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, said in a statement. “I want to commend the steadfast work of our law enforcement partners and our trial team. This case warranted their dedication, and the jury’s verdict justifies their thorough effort." In 2017, Baker was convicted in state court of reckless homicide and other crimes in the May 2014 slaying, but Bevin pardoned him after he served only two years of a 19-year sentence.
A federal agent disclosed during a hearing in June that the government is conducting a separate investigation of whether Bevin issued the pardon — one of 670 acts of clemency he granted at the end of his term — in exchange for $21,500 Baker’s brother and sister-in-law raised at a fundraiser the year before to retire Bevin’s campaign debt.
Chad Meredith was in on those pardons. The FBI is running an investigation into Bevin’s pardons, and I repeat that Chad Meredith was involved in those pardons.
Chad Meredith's part in Gov. Matt Bevin's pardons
When in Bevin's office, Meredith defended a 2017 Kentucky abortion law requiring doctors who perform abortions to first perform an ultrasound and describe the image to the patient, losing first at a trial in federal court before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later upheld the statute.
As the top appellate lawyer for Cameron, Meredith also successfully defended a state law in the Kentucky Supreme Court that stripped Gov. Beshear of his emergency power to implement COVID-19 restrictions.
Beshear said Meredith should be disqualified from a nomination for his work on the controversial pardons and commutations of Bevin at the end of his term, saying the deputy counsel “aided and advised on the most egregious abuse of power by a governor in my lifetime.”
“If you are a lawyer that advised on that and went along with it, you should be disqualified from serving in a role where you would hand out sentences," Beshear said. "I mean, these are individuals who are pardoned who are walking free today, despite committing terrible violent crimes.”
Meredith’s personal lawyer, Brandon Marshall, has told The Courier Journal Meredith had "no meaningful involvement with any of the most controversial pardons about which the media has made much.”
Meredith helped ELIMINATE Govenor Beshear’s powers to stop the spread of COVID-19. Do we really want him on the federal bench? A man who thinks fighting a pandemic is about freedom and politics instead of public health. And notice the weasel words of “no meaningful involvement” in any of Bevin’s pardons.
Meredith is a political hack. Don’t we have enough political hacks already on the federal bench? I guess what is the harm of one more on the court. /s.
Finally, because McConnell engineered this deal, it’s grotesque. The judge who is retiring used to date McConnell. Meredith worked for State Attorney General Cameron, a known protegee of McConnell. And McConnell loves the Federalist Society.
Whatever “benefit” Biden thinks he is getting with this deal is not worth it becasue MCCONELL CANNOT BE TRUSTED! McConnell is a liar and a political arsonist. He has burned the U.S. Senate down to the ground, and he is happy that abortion rights are gone.
And Biden thinks McConnell will keep his word?
This whole thing angers me and makes me sick.