Accountability

Before adjourning after midnight for its August recess, the Senate sent the nominations of Judge Boyle and four other controversial judicial nominees back to the President. Bush will have to renominate them or drop them. If the President renominates Boyle when the Senate reconvenes in September, Boyle will still need a Senate floor vote for confirmation. This latest development is a result of a Senate technicality that during long recesses, all nominations must be returned to the President unless there is unanimous consent that they stay pending in the Senate. Though the President can easily just renominate his picks, sending them back to him signals opposition and forces the President to reaffirm his support or reconsider.

Also, frustrated by the lack of Senate action on Boyle and other controversial nominees, a conservative coalition vows to launch an “August Radio Campaign on Judges” to pressure the Republican leadership.

Roll Call’s Erin P. Billings reports that “Senate Republicans, facing a major political battle and a tight legislative calendar, said last week that there’s little chance they can move any of the remaining controversial judicial nominations before the November elections. Both GOP Senators and aides said the four weeks remaining on the pre-election schedule provides them with little opportunity to engage in a potentially brutal floor fight over a polarizing court nominee. The ideal time, they said, would be to consider a nomination now, before the Senate recesses for August and before the campaign season heats up. But that window is all but shut.” The Senate recess is scheduled to begin Aug. 4, ending the day after Labor Day. Billings writes that Boyle “arguably is the most inflammatory appointment” pending now. A spokeswoman for Majority Leader Frist told Roll Call that Frist hopes to move on one of the nominees before November. But, Roll Call reported, “GOP Senate sources said it is perhaps more likely that the nominations would get their day in a post-election lame-duck session. If Republicans lose seats to the Democrats on Nov. 7, they may want to try to use those remaining weeks to try to push one or more of those hopefuls through, recognizing that the task will be much more difficult in January.”

The American Bar Association lowers its rating for Judge Boyle. The ABA committee that rates judicial nominees revoked its unanimous “well qualified” rating. A majority of the ABA committee now rates Boyle “qualified,” while a minority still calls him well qualified, with one abstention.

One of Boyle’s former clerks, Washington-based attorney Lars Liebeler, attacks Salon and CIR in a letter to the Washington Times. He also asserts that Boyle sold all his Quintiles stock before presiding over a 2001 Quintiles case – and that Boyle’s accountant confirmed this in a letter made available to all senators. Salon later points out this would mean Boyle made errors on two of his financial disclosure filings, where he reported owning Quintiles in 2001 and selling it in 2002.

CIR reports in Salon that for those conflicts Boyle disputed in his letter, the judge’s explanation contradicts his own financial filings and federal ethics law. One ethics expert says Boyle was “”trying to fudge the language.”

Also, the Raleigh News & Observer quotes Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) as saying that since Boyle has responded to the conflict of interest charges, “At the end of the day, this is a decision Bill Frist and Arlen Specter have to make.” A Frist spokeswoman told the paper that a vote on Boyle has not been scheduled.

One of President Bush's most controversial judicial nominees has admitted to presiding over several cases in which he held a financial interest, in violation of federal law. In his first public response to the ethical violations revealed by the Center for Investigative Reporting and Salon on May 1, Judge Terrence W. Boyle of North Carolina

Boyle’s letter of explanation to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter is made public. Boyle admits to some of the conflicts, calling them inadvertent, minor mistakes. He wrote: “While my stock holdings were relatively insignificant, I regret that the oversight occurred. It certainly was not my intention to participate in a case where I held stock in one of the parties.”