There is no topic that federal judicial nominees love more than proclaiming their commitment to upholding the rule of law in a nonpartisan, even-handed manner. The website you are reading right now takes its name from perhaps the most infamous attempt to make this point: Chief Justice John Roberts’s assertion during his confirmation hearings that judges are “umpires” who just call “balls and strikes.” In my view, before trotting out this metaphor on national television, he really should have consulted with someone familiar with Angel Hernandez’s body of work.
For someone like Greg Cook, adhering to these talking points is an especially difficult challenge. This is because Cook, whom Trump nominated in June to a district court judgeship in Alabama, currently sits on the Supreme Court of Alabama, whose justices run for office in partisan elections. And even in Republicans-in-Alabama-adjusted terms, Cook has spent his career as an enthusiastic partisan: He volunteered for President George W. Bush during the 2000 recount in Florida, spent four years as general counsel to the Alabama Republican Party, and served as a delegate for Trump in 2020. (To answer your immediate question: He says he was in Birmingham on January 6.)
Alabama voters evidently found this pitch appealing, as Cook beat his Democratic opponent by 35 points. However, as a nominee to the federal bench, Cook suddenly faces the unenviable task of persuading a bare majority of U.S. senators that he is not a MAGA dead-ender hell-bent on defeating the woke agenda, despite a track record of saying unhinged shit that would not feel out of place if you heard it from a heckler at a Trump rally, or even from the big man himself.
On the very first page of his responses to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, for example, Cook was asked about his campaign promise to serve as a “Trump Tough” judge, and about a speech after the 2024 election in which he expressed “wonderful relief” that “the great national nightmare is over.” His first answer—that by “Trump Tough,” he intended to convey that he would decide cases according to the “rule of law”—is funny enough. His second answer—that the “great national nightmare” quote, which is, again, his own characterization of the Biden administration, is a “matter of political controversy” that the judicial code of conduct prevents him from discussing—is the sort of thing that should make you embarrassed to show your face in public if you ever find yourself having to write it.
I want to stress that this is just the first in a long series of incidents that Cook has to try and walk back. At various points, he addresses his prior assertions that “the WOKE mob is trying to take over every office” (“I do not have personal recollection of the quote from this particular speech”); that “we have to make sure that those local people who run elections are Republicans” (“my goal was to convince listeners of the need to vote”); that he’s “not just somebody that says they’re Republican,” as he’s “been doing this for 30 years” (“if I am confirmed, people in my courtroom will be able to trust that they will be treated fairly”); and that “ANY REPUBLICAN IS BETTER THAN ANY DEMOCRAT” (“this statement is out of context”).
The main reason Cook has to answer for these statements is because they are so cartoonishly, unambiguously partisan in nature. But this track record also makes him an ideal candidate for the powers that be in the Trump administration: a guy with unimpeachable conservative bona fides who has repeatedly demonstrated that he can be trusted to do what’s best for the GOP when the stakes are highest. Cook’s 2022 boast that he “walks the walk” of being a Republican, for example, is not a signal to the White House that it should find someone else. It is proof that they don’t need to look any further.
There is also some recency bias at play here. As I’ve written many times, the notion that judges immediately shed their preferences, biases, and opinions the moment they put on a robe is one of the most pernicious myths of the legal profession. In 2000, when young Greg Cook was working diligently to wrap up the 2000 election for Bush, some of the lawyers who would have been working alongside him were John Roberts, Amy Coney, and Brett Kavanaugh, who went on to work in the Bush administration for several years after that. Cook’s nomination is a reminder that Republican justices and judges are not meaningfully less “Republican” simply by virtue of being justices and judges. It’s just that more time has passed since they had jobs where they were supposed to talk about it.
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Leaving aside the rest of the dancing and dodging, I wanted to note this one:
So Greg Crook - sorry, Cook - says it'd be "inappropriate" for him to "opine" on why he referred to the Biden administration as a "great national nightmare" because of the "Code of Conduct for United States Judges, Canons 3 and 5."
First, no one is asking for an opinion, they're asking for an explanation. It's an evasion.
But beyond that, that Code of Conduct says it applies to "United States circuit judges, district judges, Court of International Trade judges, Court of Federal Claims judges, bankruptcy judges, and magistrate judges. Certain provisions of this Code apply to special masters and commissioners as indicated in the 'Compliance' section. "
There's not a single word in there about nominees. The Code he says prevents him from answering - oh, how he'd love to answer the question but gosh darn it all, he just can't - *doesn't apply to him.* Which moves his answer from an evasion into a lie.
I guess he really has proven his reactionary bona fides: an evasive, lying, Trump boot-licking, power-hungry, tool.
How did Dick Durbin vote on Cook?