Bounds Doubles Down on Obfuscation of His Record

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 9, 2018  – Following today’s confirmation hearing for Ryan Bounds, President Trump’s nominee for a seat on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, AFJ President Nan Aron released the following statement:

“At his Senate confirmation hearing today, Ryan Bounds tried to downplay offensive writings in his record and his decision not to disclose them to Oregon’s judicial selection committee.  In fact, the chairman of Oregon’s committee has stated that Bounds ‘misled’ them about the existence of any controversial writings.  A majority of Oregon’s committee members have stated unequivocally that they would not have voted to recommend Bounds’s nomination for the federal bench had they known about these ‘deeply troubling writings,’ which disparaged LGBTQ people, sexual assault survivors, people of color, and workers. This nondisclosure of hateful material is also the reason why Oregon’s home-state senators withheld their approval of Bounds’s nomination. The decision of Senate GOP leadership to force this hearing to go forward over all these objections is more evidence that Republicans and the Trump Administration will stop at nothing to pursue their court-packing goals.”

The full text of the letter from the chairman of Oregon’s Federal Judicial Selection Advisory Committee, regarding Ryan Bounds’s failure to disclose his writings, appears at S2537 of the Congressional Record, here.