Kentucky governor urges Biden to rescind controversial court pick

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) called on President Biden during a press conference on Thursday to rescind any decision to nominate Chad Meredith to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

“It’s been plenty of time and by now they should be telling us that it’s going to be rescinded,” Beshear said.

Meredith has not been nominated to the court, but The Hill and other news organizations have obtained emails that suggest the White House was on the verge of nominating Meredith the same day the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion rights.

Meredith’s nomination was not made on June 24, the day of the Supreme Court’s decision, and has not been made since.

A June 23 email from White House aide Kathleen Marshall to Coulter Minix, the director of Beshear’s office in Washington, D.C., had indicated that Meredith would be nominated the next day. 

A second email on June 29, also from Marshall to Minix, says the content in the first email was “pre-decisional and privileged.”

Meredith has previously worked on cases restricting abortion access, including representing former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) in a case in which Planned Parenthood alleged it had not been given a license to perform abortions in the state, thereby violating the law, according to the Louisville Courier Journal.

Beshear and Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) are among the officials who have criticized any step to nominate Meredith.

Yarmuth has suggested a plan to nominate Meredith could have been part of a deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to get judicial nominees through a closely divided Senate.

In the press conference, Beshear focused on Meredith’s record on other cases and did not mention his anti-abortion stance, saying that Meredith “is the deputy general counsel who worked on pardons that allowed rapists and murderers to walk free.”

“The fact that this individual assisted former governor Bevin with the worst misuse or abuse of gubernatorial power certainly in my lifetime should be disqualifying,” Beshear said, referring to the pardons Meredith worked on with Bevin.

Beshear criticized both Meredith and Bevin for granting a pardon to a person who had been involved in the gang rape of a minor, whom Beshear had prosecuted during his time as Kentucky attorney general.

Beshear reiterated the Biden administration’s claim that Meredith’s nomination is on hold and said that he had not “received any definitive reason” for the nomination.

“I certainly hope that they will back off of it,” Beshear said. “Certainly you can expect any conversations on this, I will continue to tell them that this is not an acceptable nomination and I and the rest of Kentucky oppose it.”