Grassley Disagrees With Trump: You Can’t Have An Ethnic Test To Be Judge

United States Senator Chuck Grassley (Republican of Iowa), Chairman, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, listens as Loretta Lynch, United States Attorney For The Eastern District Of New York, U.S. Department of J... United States Senator Chuck Grassley (Republican of Iowa), Chairman, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, listens as Loretta Lynch, United States Attorney For The Eastern District Of New York, U.S. Department of Justice, Brooklyn, NY testifies before the committee to confirm her appointment as U.S. Attorney General on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, January 28, 2015. She will be replacing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Credit: Ron Sachs / CNP (RESTRICTION: NO New York or New Jersey Newspapers or newspapers within a 75 mile radius of New York City) /dpa - NO WIRE SERVICE - Photo by: Ron Sachs/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images MORE LESS
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Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said Tuesday that he disagreed with presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump’s critiques on a federal judge’s ethnicity.

“Well, I surely disagree with Mr. Trump on that point, and you can’t have a religious or ethnic test to be a judge in America,” Grassley said in an interview on KXEL radio, as first flagged by BuzzFeed News.

Trump has argued that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel has a conflict of interest in presiding over cases against Trump University because of his “Mexican heritage.”

Grassley, who noted that he supported Curiel’s nomination to the bench, said a person should go through the motions to get a judge removed if he or she thinks that judge is unfair.

“I can only tell what I would do, and I wouldn’t say what Trump said and obviously, I just told you, I disagree with it. Although, I’m not informed of the facts of the case,” Grassley said. “But, just normally, you’d say if you think you can’t get a fair trial, or a judge has bias, then you go through the process of motions, to get the judge removed.”

Grassley has said he will support the Republican Party’s nominee and would trust Trump with nominating a justice to the Supreme Court.

Earlier in the day, Senator Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) called on Grassley to disavow Trump’s comments about Curiel and said that the judiciary committee had “wasted countless dollars and research to help Trump’s candidacy against Secretary Clinton” instead of vetting President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee.

Listen to Grassley’s comments below:

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