Trump judicial nominee backs away from remarks on date rape
Published in Associated Press
President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Brett Kavanaugh on a high-profile appeals court backed away from language she used as a college student in writing about sexual assault, race and equal rights for women.
“To be honest, looking back at some of those writings … I cringe at some of the language I used,” Neomi Rao told the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, adding that writings in which she criticized affirmative action and suggested that intoxicated women were partly responsible for date rape do not reflect her current thinking.
“I like to think I’ve matured as a thinker, writer and indeed as a person,” she said at a confirmation hearing for a seat on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Trump nominated Rao for the seat left vacant when Brett Kavanaugh joined the Supreme Court.
Rao, who currently serves as administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, said there were “certainly some sentences and phrases” from her college writing in the 1990s that “I would never use today.”