MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Supreme Court

Interview

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HAYES: So any one of the President Trump`s picks is essentially a Leonard Leo pick and that nominee will hold in their hands the future of legalized abortion of Roe v Wade the almost certain collision course as well between President Trump and the Mueller investigation with questions about whether the President himself is above the law as well as of course a whole raft of questions about civil rights, labor rights, consumer rights, regulation that have already been chipped away by the courts majority. Senator Richard Blumenthal member of the Senate Judiciary Committee joins me now. I want to start with something that your colleague Senator Bob Casey said today and get your reaction. We`ll see what they view tonight but I`m going to be a no and that`s because it`s a corrupt process when you can only pick from 25 people from a list generated by it and developed by the Heritage Foundation and Federal Society and funded by the corporate right. I cannot support that. It`s a flawed system. Do you agree with him?

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT), SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: I agree totally. And the reason is quite simply that every one of the names and nominees potentially on this list has been vetted and screened to meet the Trump litmus test. Let`s be very, very blunt here, Chris. I was a law clerk to Justice Blackmun in the year after he wrote the majority opinion in Roe v Wade. I`ve argued cases in the United States Supreme Court four of them. Never before has a President outsourced the decision of a Supreme Court nomination in this way. Never before has a president in effect made the Federalist Society take him as a puppet. The President of the United States has become a puppet here of a far-right fringe group and at stake are the potential of rolling back rights involving health care the millions of Americans protected from pre-existing condition, but also taking us back to a time when abortion was criminalized, women were prosecuted. They died and they were denied access to contraception. So real impacts on real lives more than just the chipping away the possible overturning because of this corrupt process.

HAYES: Let me just make sure that I understand you. I said you do you agree -- Casey says he is a "no" already. It doesn`t matter who it is. Are you and "no" already?

BLUMENTHAL: I hesitate to advance the President process. If it is one of those nominees I would be almost certainly a "no" and I believe that my colleagues will join me because at stake are not only those rights but also as you mentioned earlier the idea that we could have the swing crucial vote on whether the President has to comply with a subpoena the grand jury, whether he can pardon himself or others, whether he has to obey the Emolument`s Clause, the chief federal protection against corruption. I`ve sued the President of the United States along with 200 of my colleagues to compel him to obey that clause. I think that this nominee has to commit to recuse him or herself but I would be a "no" vote.

HAYES: Do -- you`re familiar with the court, you just told me you clerked on the court, a biographical detail that I did not know actually. There is this argument right, that this is all people who are fundamentally you know, trying to call balls and strikes in the words of Justice Roberts that that`s it`s all sort of processed driven and you know, that awesome the outside we`re so concerned with outcomes and we`re focused on that but the people like Leonard Leo and others they`re not -- they`re not testing for a litmus test on how someone`s going to decide, it`s about judicial temperament and their approach to the Constitution. Do you buy that?

BLUMENTHAL: You know, we have heard these phony platitudes again and again and again. We heard him from Neil Gorsuch, we heard him from now Chief Justice Roberts about adhering to established precedent. Just a couple weeks ago we saw and established precedent 40 years old overturned by the court with Roberts and Gorsuch supporting that step. We know that these evasive, canned, rehearsed answers are absolutely meaningless when they are accompanied by refusal in response to my questions and others to state that Brown v Board of Education was correctly decided, or Roe v Wade was correctly decided, or Loving versus Virginia, or (INAUDIBLE), other well- established principles of law so the answer to your question is no more business as usual, no more differential or courteous acceptance of these phony platitudes.

HAYES: That sounds like a make for interesting hearings one way or the other. Senator Richard Blumenthal, thank you for some time tonight.

BLUMENTHAL: Thank you.

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