John Cornyn says Judge Kacsmaryk should not have taken name off anti-abortion article

WASHINGTON — Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Monday he will “look into” allegations that Matthew Kacsmaryk, a federal judge in Amarillo, hid from senators his authorship of a law review article revealing the depths of his opposition to abortion rights.
“I don’t think anybody should do that. … The process only works if we … have candor and truthful answers. So that’s significant,” said Cornyn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee responsible for vetting Kacsmaryk’s nomination.
In contrast, Cornyn brushed aside questions of impropriety involving lavish vacations Justice Clarence Thomas took courtesy of Dallas real estate magnate Harlan Crow, who also bought property in Georgia from the justice.
It’s up to the judicial branch to enforce the rules on its own members, Cornyn said of Thomas and Crow.
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Both Cornyn and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, voted to confirm Kacsmaryk in 2019.
The Washington Post reported Kacsmaryk submitted an article to a Texas law review in early 2017 criticizing the Obama administration’s efforts to protect transgender people and those seeking abortions.
While Kacsmaryk initially was identified as the article’s only author, he later asked for his name to be removed and replaced with two colleagues from his legal group First Liberty Institute, according to the Post. By that point, he already had been interviewed by Cornyn and Cruz about a judgeship, the Post reported.
The article was then published around the same time then-President Donald Trump nominated Kacsmaryk to the bench.
First Liberty spokesman Hiram Sasser and Aaron Reitz, the journal’s former editor in chief who is now a deputy to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, both told the Post that Kacsmaryk’s name had been on the article as a “placeholder.”
But another former editor, who spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity, disputed those accounts.
Kacsmaryk’s staunchly conservative views on social issues were hardly a secret when he was nominated. He had criticized the foundation of the landmark abortion rights case Roe vs. Wade and signed onto a letter calling transgender people “delusional.”
But the law review article would have highlighted just how strongly he felt on those hot button issues and may have previewed how he would rule in cases such as the injunction he recently issued on FDA approval of mifepristone.
Cornyn was asked by a reporter if Kacsmaryk’s failure to disclose the article constituted a “misrepresentation” to the committee.
“Well, yeah, I don’t approve of that for anybody,” Cornyn responded.
Cornyn said the Judiciary Committee doesn’t need to investigate Thomas and that he’s confident the Supreme Court itself can enforce the rules governing justices.
“There are senators who accept hospitality on a personal basis and don’t necessarily disclose that,” Cornyn said. “But I’m for people following the rules.”
Cruz defended both Kacsmaryk and Thomas, casting them as unfairly maligned by Democrats and the news outlets that don’t like the way they judge cases.
He said the Judiciary Committee asks nominees to submit only articles they have published and suggested Kacsmaryk was not responsible for the law review article in question.
“It’s a strange concept that nominees are expected to disclose articles they didn’t write and didn’t publish,” Cruz said.
Kacsmaryk initially submitted the article under his name and the published version was nearly exactly the same, according to the Post.
Cruz said Thomas in particular has been the subject of attacks by Democrats.
“Ethical standards applied to the judiciary are certainly a fair topic for the Senate to consider, but in this context these are not good faith criticisms,” Cruz said. “This is a political hit job. And it is Democrats and the media applying a standard to Justice Thomas that is applied to no other judge and no other justice.”