Carolina Journal
Staff Report
North Carolina’s senior US senator is criticizing a federal Appeals Court judge’s decision to rescind his pending retirement. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis played the leading role in blocking the Biden administration’s choice to replace Judge James Wynn.
In a three-sentence letter Friday to President Biden, Wynn officially withdrew a Jan. 5 letter announcing his plans to move to senior status on the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The 4th Circuit covers cases from North Carolina.
Tillis highlighted the letter Saturday as he criticized Wynn’s “stunning decision” in a prepared statement.
“Judge Wynn’s brazenly partisan decision to rescind his retirement is an unprecedented move that demonstrates some judges are nothing more than politicians in robes,” Tillis said. “Judge Wynn clearly takes issue with the fact that Donald Trump was just elected President, and this decision is a slap in the face to the U.S. Senate, which came to a bipartisan agreement to hold off on confirming his replacement until the next Congress is sworn in in January. The Senate Judiciary Committee should hold a hearing on his blatant attempt to turn the judicial retirement system into a partisan game, and he deserves the ethics complaints and recusal demands from the Department of Justice heading his way.”
The senator pointed to a WNCT television report from March detailing a retirement celebration for Wynn in his hometown of Robersonville.
Tillis had warned Wynn in November against changing his retirement plans.
“I expect that judges who submitted their retirements will not play partisan politics with a presidential transition and a bipartisan Senate deal going back on their word to retire,” Tillis wrote last month. “No judges did this during the previous lame duck because the judiciary needs to be above partisan politics.”
That statement accompanied Tillis’ announcement of a deal on Capitol Hill that allowed most Biden judicial nominees to move forward while blocking four Appeals Court appointments. Among those blocked in the deal was North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park, who had been nominated to succeed Wynn.
Had Wynn gone forward with his retirement plans as scheduled, President-elect Donald Trump would have selected a new nominee to serve a life term on the 4th Circuit.
Tillis had publicly opposed Park as a 4th Circuit nominee.
“I know that this nominee has no prayer of getting confirmed by the full U.S. Senate unless Chuck Schumer and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle play a game and wait for a funeral or an illness to cause an absentee problem on our side,” Tillis said on the Senate floor days before the deal was finalized with Schumer and the Biden administration. “I confirmed this morning what I said in this hearing a couple of months ago. I have the votes to defeat this nominee on the floor.”
“Ryan Park’s nomination is a last-ditch effort by Senate Dems and the Biden Administration to install an activist judge,” Tillis had posted on X/Twitter the week after voters elected Trump to a second term. “They have constantly worked in bad faith and even tried to nominate a partisan Democrat who ran against @SenTedBuddNC. Americans spoke clearly last week. No more activist judges. No partisan lame-duck confirmations.”
Tillis blasted the Biden administration’s approach toward judicial confirmation.
“The White House counsel proved to be absolutely incompetent,” said Tillis. “In this process, they put forth a list of four nominees that they wanted me to choose from that included Ted Budd’s opponent in a Senate election, someone who is patently partisan and has a track record to substantiate it, and they think that’s a serious list for me to choose from. And then, when I provide them a list of four, they say, not only are they not fit for the Fourth Circuit, but we wouldn’t even consider them for a district court judge. I did my homework, and I built relationships on the other side of the aisle.”
Wynn, 70, has served on the 4th Circuit since then-President Barack Obama appointed him in 2010. Prior to joining the federal bench, he served on the North Carolina Court of Appeals from 1990 to 1998 and from 1999 to 2010. He served as an appointee to the North Carolina Supreme Court for three months in 1998.
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