May 1, 2020
By Carl Hulse
Just days before a high-profile Senate confirmation hearing (click here) to fill a vacancy on the prestigious U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the court’s chief judge has opened the door to an inquiry into whether ethical improprieties occurred in the creation of the coveted opening.
In an order dated May 1, Judge Sri Srinivasan asked Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to assign another circuit to look into a complaint filed by the progressive advocacy group Demand Justice, which questioned the timing and circumstances of Judge Thomas B. Griffith’s retirement announcement in early March.
The advocacy group acted in March after disclosures that Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader who has focused intently on conservative judicial confirmations the past three years, had been contacting appeals court judges nominated by Republican presidents to encourage them to retire. In the case of Judge Griffith, his retirement opened the way for his retirement opened the way for President Trump to nominate Justin Walker, a 37-year-old protégé of Mr. McConnell’s whom the senator had ardently promoted for the seat....
The retiring judge is expected to have been given a sweet deal to retire to open a seat on the DC Circuit.
May 5, 2020
...Therefore, if Judge Griffith (click here) accepted anything of value in exchange for his retirement from the bench, including the promise of future employment, such as a prestigious professorship, or future income or any bonuses that could have come with an agreement for future employment, he may be violating these Rules....
Walker is yet another member of the Federalist Society with no experience to be assigned to the DC Circuit. His age alone provides for the inexperience of a man that has mostly clerked for Supreme Court judges.
Justin R. Walker (click here) is a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. Prior to his confirmation, he was a professor at Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville from 2015 to 2019. Judge Walker graduated from Duke University and Harvard Law School. After graduating from law school, he practiced appellate law in Washington, D.C., and clerked for Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Walker was given the seat at the US District Court of Western Kentucky on June 19, 2019. He is the radical right. It is another religiously based appointment. They are trying to change the courts, not based in established law and principle, but, by their own religious prejudice.
ANOTHER QUID PRO QUO:
May 5, 2020
In March, after Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh took time off from his Supreme Court duties to swear in Justin Walker to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky in Louisville, the newly minted judge recognized how he had gotten there at the age of 37, with zero trial experience but a pedigree in conservatism....
...He closed with a broadside against the American Bar Association, which had given him a rare “Not Qualified” rating for his absence of courtroom work, categorizing the professional organization among his “opponents.”...
...Republicans promote Judge Walker as a “drain the swamp” Washington outsider, who triumphed over a hardscrabble upbringing in Kentucky to reach the heights of American jurisprudence 11 years out of law school.
“He’s young, brilliant and conservative,” said Mike Davis, who leads the Article III Project, a judicial advocacy group that has pushed President Trump’s appointments to the federal bench.
The current Judge Walker is the son of a judge and the grandson of a very wealthy man that went on to be Secretary of Transportation in Kentucky, Frank R. Metts. Justin Walker is another person of privilege to pollute the USA Justice system.
665 S.W.2d 318 (1984)
Frank R. METTS (click here) (now J.F. Runke), Secretary of Transportation; Drexell R. Davis, Kentucky State Treasurer; George Fischer (now Robert L. Warren), Secretary of Finance & Administration Cabinet, Commonwealth of Kentucky, Appellants, v. CITY OF FRANKFORT, Kentucky and Robert C. Yount, Appellees.
Court of Appeals of Kentucky.
March 9, 1984.
Robert Metts is the great-grandfather of Justin Walker. No doubt Justin Walker is the dream come true of the religious right.
Justin's daddy was a very wealthy man.
...This is an appeal from an order (click here) and judgment of the Jefferson Circuit Court, Chancery Branch, permanently enjoining the appellants herein from conducting various business ventures due to certain restrictions as contained in a deed of conveyance. There is also an amended order and judgment being appealed in this case.
On April 17, 1969, Frank R. Metts (Justin's Daddy) and Miller Kimbrough, Jr., as co-trustees, who hereinafter for brevity will be referred to as Metts, purchased a 95.48 acre tract of unimproved land in Jefferson County, Kentucky, for the sum of $2,387,000.00. It has been subdivided into acreage tracts and is known as the "Village Subdivision"....
Justin's mommy is a political socialite in Kentucky, right Moscow Mitch?
