Amy Klobuchar Compiles Mystery List of Supreme Court Nominees, Refuses to Name Names

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., speaks during the National
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
Kyle Morris

Democrat presidential hopeful Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) joined The NPR Politics Podcast Monday and discussed her preparation of a list of future candidates for the Supreme Court of the United States.

Klobuchar refused to name the names of the particular judicial candidates but insisted that on day one of her presidency, should she be elected, she would nominate a great deal of judges.

“There’s going to be a lot of retirements, a lot of openings, and we have to move immediately,” Klobuchar told the NPR podcast.

Klobuchar claimed that she could not properly name those that she would nominate because, as a candidate, she does not “have the FBI” to vet those individuals.

“I think that you interview people, you make decisions — you can’t do that as a candidate,” Klobuchar stated. “You can’t vet them like you should. As a candidate you don’t have the FBI.”

As a presidential candidate in 2016, Donald Trump released a list of those he would consider nominating to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created after Justice Antonin Scalia unexpectedly passed away. Trump’s move garnered both praise and criticism.

While it may have played out well for Trump, Klobuchar said, “That’s just not what I’m going to do.”

Last month, a New York Times report revealed that liberals were beginning to compile lists of potential judges for “a post-Trump surge.”

In response to Klobuchar’s statements regarding judicial nominations, Carrie Severino, the chief counsel and policy director of Judicial Crisis Network, wrote in a tweet: “2020 Dem prez candidate  now admits in an interview with  that she actually *is* working on a secret list of possible  candidates.”

Klobuchar, a former prosecutor and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also discussed the Mueller report and Russian election interference and once again said she believes President Trump committed obstruction of justice.

“It was laid out with those ten instances of obstruction,” Klobuchar claimed. “There’s a concept in the law called ‘totality of the evidence,’ and that is that you look at everything together, you look at this pattern, and when you look at it as a pattern, to me it’s very clear it’s obstruction.”

Asked whether her administration would pursue obstruction of justice charges against a “former President Trump,” Klobuchar said she would want to review the evidence.

“As a former prosecutor, I’m very careful about saying what I’m going to do until you look at the evidence,” Klobuchar said.

Klobichar went on to say that she believed there should be separation between the Justice Department and the president when making prosecutorial decisions.

“Those are decisions that shouldn’t be made with political involvement,” Klobuchar said. “I would never say definitively what I’m going to do because you want to allow the lawyers and the people who are supposed to do that work do it without political influence.”

She continued, “This is one of the problems of Donald Trump, who’s going after companies and selecting people that he thinks should be prosecuted. That’s not how we want the American justice system to work.”

Klobuchar also claimed current Republicans serving in Congress are “afraid of” President Trump.

“These Republicans right now with Donald Trump, it’s like, ‘How high can I jump?'” Klobuchar stated. “They are afraid of him.”

She added, “So a new president coming in who understands Congress and understands them will be in a better place to be able to find those common-ground points.”

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