Nusrat Choudhury Should NOT be Confirmed As a Federal Judge

This year, President Biden nominated Nusrat Choudhury to be a federal judge for the Eastern District of New York.  In her Senate hearing, Ms. Choudhury repeatedly clearly indicated that it does not matter if people lie when they are speaking as “an advocate”.¹  She made clear that this is her standard for herself as well as for others.

This is perhaps the most shocking statement I’ve heard from a nominee.  Such a nominee should be promptly replaced with someone else. 

Yet the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are proposing that the full Senate approve her candidacy.  If you’d like to comment to members of the Committee, here is the list of the Democrats on the Committee:

Richard Durbin, IL                            Richard Blumenthal, CT

Patrick Leahy, VT                             Mazie Hirono, HI

Dianne Feinstein, CA                        Cory Booker, NJ

Sheldon Whitehouse, RI                   Alex Padilla, CA

Amy Klobuchar, MN                        John Ossoff, GA

Christopher Coons, DE

Her supporters are tarring Republicans for challenging her candidacy and trying to distract from the statements she clearly made.

Even if she did not make the original statement that she was questioned about (although it seems likely that she did or would²), even if that original statement was true (clearly not³), what really matters is that her standard for herself and other advocates is that lying is OK in support of their cause.   

Senator Kennedy of LA confronted her relative to material she submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of her nomination process.  He asked about a statement she reportedly made (according to the papers she submitted) while on a panel Princeton University.  Kennedy asked: “You said that the killing of unarmed black men by police happens every day in America. Did you say that?”  Repeatedly, Ms. Choudhury responded “I said it in my role as an advocate”.²  She further indicated that she was engaged in “rhetorical advocacy”, in other words that she was trying to persuade people more so than be accurate.  These comments cannot be explained away as verbal errors, being caught off guard, misconstrued, etc.  She made herself very clear.

Inaccurate statements by “advocates” and media have a huge negative impact on society.  In this particular case, people routinely greatly overstate the likelihood that an unarmed black will be killed by police.⁴  Such misunderstanding exacerbates our problems.  We need to tone down the damaging rhetoric.  Obviously, people who spread such inaccurate rhetoric should be held accountable. 

Hopefully Ms. Choudhury has a bright future ahead of her, but even in her subsequent letter, she did not retract her comments excusing lying by advocates.  If we want people to trust the judiciary, we must not elevate a candidate who condones lying, especially publicly. 

Certainly, the Democrats can find another qualified candidate to replace her.  Then Ms. Choudhury and others may learn from her mistake and embrace honest advocacy in the future.  That would be an excellent result.  But why should people value honesty if they are rewarded despite advocating dishonesty?

Claude

Footnotes:

¹ Watch her testimony and read it at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/watch-judicial-nominee-nusrat-choudhury-self-destruct-under-questioning-by-senator-john-kennedy/.

 

² Initially, she said “I don’t recall the statement but it is something I may have said in that context.”

Subsequently, she acknowledged 3 times that “I said it in my role as an advocate.”

Later she wrote a letter saying the statement is not true and that she had not made that statement.  In that letter (https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/QFR%20Responses%20-%20Choudhury%20-%202022-04-27.pdf), she wrote:

“I did not make this statement. I strongly disavow this statement, and I regret not disavowing this statement during my hearing. And to be clear, the statement is not true.”  (CT: Unfortunately, this statement comes from a person who has clearly stated that she believes in lying when done in an advocacy role.  It is reasonable to distrust this statement.)

“There is no record that I made this statement, and I did not do so.” (CT: Same problem, plus she later references that there is a record, albeit possibly incorrect.  This was a carefully constructed letter.  Why would it have such an inconsistency?)

“The only record of my remarks at the 2015 event are tweets posted by people I do not know. The tweet that appears to be the basis for misattributing this statement to me is anonymous, inaccurate, and does not capture the full context of the discussion.”  (CT: It may well be true that the tweet, no longer available on the internet, was misleading.  However, according to Senator Grassley, the tweet was sent out by the organization that hosted the event at which she spoke and that she continued to be in contact with that organization.   Source: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/klvykoqdwvg/grassley_et_al.ltodurbinchoudhuryhearing.pdf0.  It is not comforting that she characterizes this organization as “people I do not know”.   It sounds like President Trump, who “never knew” people when it is no longer convenient for him to have known them.)

To be fair, I think I saw a suggestion that she was referring to confrontations occurring between black people and policemen “every day”.  That certainly would be accurate, but I couldn’t find that again as I was writing this.

 

³ As noted in footnote #2, Ms. Choudhury herself now says that the statement is false.  I searched for information about how many unarmed black males are killed by the police in the USA each year.  Note that some of the following statistics include a few women; more importantly some are incomplete.  The sources quoted below conclude that the number of unarmed black males killed by the police ranges from 1 every 4 days to 1 every 4 weeks.  That’s a big problem but dramatically different from Ms. Choudhury’s claim.  On the other hand, a couple of the sources suggest that police kill two black people every 3 days.  Few of those are women and while a good number may be armed, that data suggests more black deaths than the previously cited data.  If about 60% of those killed were armed, the data that does not differentiate between armed and unarmed would be consistent with the “1 every 4 weeks” data point.

1.      Since 2015, police officers have fatally shot at least 135 unarmed Black men and women nationwide, an NPR investigation has found. CT note: that’s nearly 23 per year but includes a few black women.  Cases of police brutality against black people are overestimated (nypost.com)

2.      The number in 2019 was 27, according to a Skeptic Research survey reported at Cases of police brutality against black people are overestimated (nypost.com).

3.      That Skeptic Survey however includes the following wording “The available data on police shootings of unarmed Black men is incomplete; however, existing data indicate that somewhere between 13-27 unarmed black men were killed by police in 2019. Adjusted for the number of law enforcement agencies that have yet to provide data, this number may be higher, perhaps between 60-100.”  CT note: that expanded projection suggests approximately one in every 4 days.  Source: How Informed are Americans about Race and Policing? (CUPES-007) (skeptic.com)

4.      Another source indicates that over a 7-year period, fewer than 50 unarmed blacks were killed on average by police each year.

5.      The Washington Post claims to have a complete data base and reports that about 270 blacks are killed by police each year, but that includes armed as well as unarmed people.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_10

6.      Likewise, Newsweek reports 203 in 2021, including armed and unarmed people of both genders.  Full List of Black People Killed By Police in 2021 (newsweek.com)

⁴Inaccurate statements by such “advocates” and media have a huge negative impact on society.  People routinely greatly overstate the likelihood that an unarmed black will be killed by police.

1.      “In a survey conducted by Manhattan Institute colleague Eric Kaufmann, for example, eight in 10 African-Americans and about half of white Biden voters said that they thought that young black men were more likely to be shot to death by police than to die in a car accident—one of the largest mortality risks to the young and healthy.” Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/watch-judicial-nominee-nusrat-choudhury-self-destruct-under-questioning-by-senator-john-kennedy/

2.      The aforementioned Skeptic Research Survey found that “over half (53.5%) of those reporting “very liberal” political views estimated that 1,000 or more unarmed Black men were killed”.  Furthermore, “The available data suggest that 24.9% of people killed by police in 2019 were Black. However, across the political spectrum, survey participants overestimated this number. Those who reported being “liberal” or “very liberal” were particularly inaccurate, estimating the proportion to be 56% and 60%, respectively.”

 

Other source:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/republicans-bid-unusual-2nd-hearing-biden-judicial-pick-rejected-2022-05-24/