Josh Hawley GRILLS Missouri Judicial Nominee Over Voter ID Laws? ‘Your Views Have CHANGED’

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Congratulations to the nominees. Thank you for being here. It's great, Mr. Ossetti, to see you and to see another Missourian on this panel. I think this will be number, I think, sixth district court nominee that President Trump has gotten to appoint out of the state of Missouri in the last year and a half. So that's a pretty good record. And you have such a strong advocate in former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Who is a big believer in you. So he and I have had, he must have called me 15 times about your nomination. So anyway, he's, as I said to him when I talked to him on the phone, I said, John, anybody who you're for, I'm for. So anyway, he's a great man. And it's great to see that you've got his support. I just want to give you a chance to. A follow-up on what Senator Durbin was asking about a second ago, this article, and Senator Kennedy asked you about it too. Thank you. This article you wrote, were you in law school back in 2016? Is that right, thereabouts? I was a 25-year-old law student, yes. And about Shelby County, and you said you disagreed with Shelby County. That's a decision written by my old boss at the Supreme Court. Thank And at the time, you said you disagreed with it, and you don't like voter ID, or you didn't like voter ID. But I thought I heard you say to... Senator Durbin, that your views have changed. Is that fair to say? you That's correct. I've litigated extensive matters very defending voter ID laws like HB 1878 in 2022 when I was general counsel for the Secretary of State's office. In Missouri, because we have a voter ID law, much. a very strong one in the state of Missouri, and you've litigated in defense of that. Yes. Yeah. And so you mentioned poll taxes to Senator Kennedy. And you mentioned those in the article, but I just want to be clear, your view now is you're not comparing voter ID to poll taxes. I mean, you think as a matter of law, those things are not equivalent. No, they're not. All I was explaining in that point, Senator, is that some of the opponents of voter ID today and some of the arguments they've made in court is to try to go back to, you know. Some of the measures that were racially discriminatory and now outlawed, obviously, through constitutional amendments and trying to make comparisons. And, of course, that comparison doesn't hold water. Voter ID is a common-sense election integrity measure, and I've had the honor of defending voter ID laws both in federal court and in state court in Missouri. Good. Okay, good. I'm glad we got that cleared up. Let me give you a chance to clear up something else some pro-life folks in the state have raised. You said to Senator Kennedy you worked at Brian Cave, a great Missouri law firm. I'm aware that Brian Cave, as a matter of public record, represented a transgender clinic called Southampton Community Healthcare back some years ago. And I guess maybe you were there at the time at the firm, but you didn't represent that clinic. Is that correct, Mr. Osei? That's correct, Senator. I was an associate, and it was a client of the firm that other partners handled. Yeah, so I think they ended up suing the Attorney General, Andrew Bailey. I think maybe you worked for him for a while, to try to stop state regulations preventing transgender surgeries for minors, which I'm 100% in favor of those regulations. But, uh, that was. You were not involved. I just want to be real clear about this. You were not involved at all in that litigation, correct? No, Senator. Not in the merits of that litigation, no. Great. Anything else, Mr. Rossetti, you'd like to say about your judicial philosophy? You know, maybe you want to talk about something you learned from General Ashcroft, but talk about how you'd approach the job and, you know, what your approach is to statutory interpretation. Just give us a sense about how you think about the law. Go ahead. Well, thank you, Senator. And again, it's really hard to believe that we're both sitting across from each other. I met you. It's been a long time since I met you in Holtz Summit at your... Opening ceremony when you'd just been sworn in as the Attorney General of Missouri and I was a law clerk on the Missouri Supreme Court at the time and It was just truly an honor and so great to see everything you've done since 2016 I worked for some great judges Zell Fisher and Bobby Shepard who taught me how to look at statutes look at the original meaning of a constitutional provision look at its text and having respect for the legislative bodies and the people that ratify the various provisions both in the Constitution and statutes and Again, that's what I've learned, and so far the best instrument, the best measure of constitutional interpretation and textual interpretation, statutory interpretation that I've come across is originalism, is textualism. It's a powerful interpretive method to, again, restrain otherwise unrestrained federal judges and other, even at the state level. And it's not a doctrine that's been developed, you know, tremendously at the state level. I was very proud when I was clerking that we had a huge emphasis for going back to the text, going to the original meaning, going to the structure of the Constitution, going to what the people at the time thought they were passing and they were in fact passing. So I have great respect for the legislative process, I have great respect for the courts. And again, someone like me who, you know, was born in a country that didn't have the kind of robust protections, due process and otherwise, that we do have in this country I'm just such a proud American. I've been able to witness that firsthand, and I'm so proud to be here as a district court nominee, and to have the opportunity to even apply those principles to begin with is quite an honor. Subscribe to One India and never miss an update. Download the One India app now.