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Popular vote loser Donald Trump is setting all the records for identifying unqualified judicial nominees, largely because he's selecting from a pool of far-right extremists. In some instances, like with the ghost hunter Brett Talley who has never argued a case in court, they're amusing. But in every case, they're dangerous. Like this guy, Thomas Farr, a former lawyer for Sen. Jesse Helms and an active participant in voter suppression, who seems to have lied to the Judiciary Committee about those activities.
A former federal attorney, Gerald Hebert, investigated complaints in 1990 that the Helms campaign was conducting a postcard campaign intended to intimidate black voters and keep them away from the polls. The campaign sent more than 100,000 cards to mostly black neighborhoods, telling voters they may be ineligible to vote and telling them that trying to vote would open them to prosecution.
Hebert told the INDY Wednesday that he learned about the role Farr played planning the postcards when responding to complaints to the Justice Department about the 1990 senatorial campaign of the late North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms.
A meeting planning "ballot security" efforts—including the intimidating postcards—included Farr and took place in mid-October before the November election between Helms, who won, and then-Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, Hebert says, referring to contemporaneous handwritten notes.
"We talked to Farr, and he confirmed a lot of what we'd heard," Hebert told the INDY Wednesday. "I don't think he can really claim that the first he heard of it from a Justice Department letter."
Yet that's exactly what he did.
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, asked Farr about his involvement with the postcards on the questionnaire she sent him.
He stated in reply, "I was not aware that the cards had been sent until they had been sent and the manager of the Helms Committee received a letter about the cards from the Voting Rights Section of the United States Department of Justice. […] The manager of the Helms Committee then called me for legal advice." But he was in the meeting in October 1990 in which the campaign plotted this voter intimidation effort.
With this news coming to light last week, Feinstein is demanding answers from Farr. But the committee has already voted to approve the nomination, though it hasn't yet been scheduled for a floor vote. Additionally, "two national nonprofit advocacy groups, Alliance for Justice and Lambda Legal, called for new Judiciary Committee hearings on Farr and Alabama nominee Brett Talley."
In both cases the committee was lied to. Here's the test of Chairman Grassley's commitment to the rule of law and to the uniquely powerful position he holds.