Trump rival Romney WILL support Senate voting on Supreme Court pick ‘this year’

DONALD Trump has received unexpected support from Senator Mitt Romney to pick a new Supreme Court justice.

The Utah senator said he’s open to confirming a nominee this year in a statement on Tuesday, a decision based on “following the law”, not on “a subjective test of ‘fairness.'”

“My decision regarding a Supreme Court nomination is not the result of a subjective test of ‘fairness’ which, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder,” Romney said.

“It is based on the immutable fairness of following the law, which in this case is the Constitution and precedent.”

He added: “The historical precedent of election year nominations is that the Senate generally does not confirm an opposing party’s nominee but does confirm a nominee of its own.”

Romney was considered the Senate GOP caucus’s swing vote, and his support for pushing forward with a nominee hurts Democrats’ chances of delaying a hearing.

Trump confirmed on Tuesday that he’ll announce his pick at the White House on Saturday.

The president also hit out at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, challenging her to impeach him a second time for nominating a replacement justice.

Speaking on Monday, Senator Lindsay Graham told Fox News that Trump “has the votes” to confirm his nominee, who will fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg‘s seat.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee slammed Democrats in a Monday night interview on Hannity after several prominent politicians on the left vowed to delay any replacement for Ginsburg, who died Friday.

“It’s pretty obvious that if they [Democrats] want an outcome, they’ll just destroy anybody’s life to keep the seats open,” Graham told host Sean Hannity.

He continued: “They said they tried to destroy Brett Kavanaugh so they could fill the seat — they were dumb enough to say that. I’ve seen this movie before. It’s not going to work, it didn’t work with Kavanaugh.”

“We’ve got the votes to confirm Justice Ginsburg’s replacement before the election,” Graham added.

“We’re going to move forward in the committee, we’re going to report the nomination out of the committee to the floor of the United States Senate so we can vote before the election. Now, that’s the constitutional process.”

Graham’s comments came after Iowa Sen Chuck Grassley and Colorado Sen Cory Gardner confirmed they would back a hearing for Trump’s nominee.

Protesters gathered outside the South Carolina senator’s home on Monday after he pledged to push forward the nomination process in the Senate.

Critics have scrutinized the pledge because of comments he made when Senate Republicans refused to move forward with Barack Obama‘s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland in 2016.

Even in 2018, Graham said: “If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term, and the primary process has started, we’ll wait till the next election.”

Trump’s nominee, who is expected to be announced later this week, “will be supported by every Republican in the Judiciary Committee, Graham added.

Amy Coney Barrett, a former University of Notre Dame professor, is reportedly the frontrunner on the president’s short list of candidates to fill Ginsburg’s seat.

Barrett was appointed to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, Illinois, in 2017.

Her confirmation to the highest court in the nation could potentially put abortion at risk because of her history of conservative stances on reproductive rights.

Barrett is a devout Catholic who is strongly pro-life – in the first law review she co-wrote, she called prohibitions on abortion “absolute” because it “takes away innocent life,” according to SCOTUSblog.

But she’s insisted that she “would never impose my own personal convictions upon the law,” the Washington Post reported.

The confirmation of Barrett, or another pro-life judge, to the Supreme Court would give conservative-leaning justices a 6-3 majority.

The new judge would join Clarence Thomas, Thomas Alito, Chief Justice John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh as judges who are generally viewed as leaning right.

Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer would remain as the so-called liberal justices.

That means if the court takes up an abortion argument, those judges on the right could still sustain a defection and rule as a majority against abortion.

The president revealed on Monday that he’ll wait until Friday or Saturday to announce his pick, after funeral services for Ginsburg have ended.

“I think in all due respect we should wait until the services are over for Justice Ginsburg,” he told Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade

“‘And so we’re looking probably at Friday or maybe Saturday.”