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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I strongly oppose the nomination of Stephen Chad Meredith to serve as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

Like several of President Trump's other judicial nominees, Mr. Meredith has a long history of taking extreme positions on women's reproductive rights.

As a Republican political appointee in Kentucky, he sought a functional ban on the most common second-trimester abortion procedure and attempted to shut down what was, at the time, the last remaining abortion clinic in the State.

And he insulted women everywhere when he argued, in court, that doctors should be required to provide certain information to female patients because these women ``don't understand'' their own medical needs.

In addition to his extreme record on reproductive rights, Mr. Meredith's involvement in pardoning a host of violent offenders--and his total lack of candor on this issue--is disqualifying.

Then-Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin pardoned hundreds of violent offenders during his last days in office. Mr. Meredith served as Governor Bevin's chief deputy general counsel during this time.

There is incontrovertible written evidence that Mr. Meredith worked on at least some of these pardons. Yet, during his hearing, he swore to this committee, under oath, that he had no involvement.

He testified, ``I learned about the Governor's last minute controversial pardons in the media after we left office.'' He also testified that he didn't have anything to do with Governor Bevin's controversial pardons. This is demonstrably untrue.

In written questions, Mr. Meredith admitted that, at Governor Bevin's request, he had personally gone to a prison to inform two inmates, in person, that they had received pardons.

One of those inmates had committed vehicular homicide. The other had been convicted of sexually abusing his six-year-old stepdaughter.

Mr. Meredith has radical views far outside the mainstream and was not forthright with this Committee about his record. I cannot support his nomination.

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