1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

I’m writing to urge you to Vote NO on Jeffrey Kuntz's nomination to the federal district court. His path to this nomination reeks of corruption. According to reports, Here's what happened: In November 2024, Kuntz contacted Senator Rick Scott's office seeking a federal judgeship. He was then randomly assigned to a three-judge panel in Alexander v. Trump, where Trump personally sued the Pulitzer Prize Board for defamation. Despite actively seeking a promotion from one of the parties before him, Kuntz refused to recuse himself. Later, in February 2025, he voted to allow Trump's lawsuit to proceed. Weeks later, Trump nominated him. This is the exact playbook Ed Artau, a similarly bad nominee, used. Artau was on the same panel, also contacted Scott's office in November, also refused to recuse, also voted for Trump, and was confirmed by Senate Republicans last September despite an ethics complaint. Kuntz is following the same corrupt script. As you well know, Federal judges get life tenure. Once confirmed, Kuntz will be functionally immune from accountability. We’ll be stuck with this imbalanced, partisan judge until he does something really outrageous. Impeachments are too rare. The only removal mechanism requires 67 Senate votes. This nomination rewards a judge who created an obvious conflict of interest to prove his loyalty to Trump. That's disqualifying, not a credential. Whether Republicans will stop nominating such unqualified neo-criminals is uncertain, and stopping them in committee is hard. Yet I urge you to stop normalizing this payola for appointments. The High Court has enough “Conservative” criminals on it, we don’t need more biased and compromised justice like Kuntz on the farm team. Vote NO on Kuntz. Thank you.