Senator Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, urges Senate Republicans to give the president's Supreme Court nominee Merrick B. Garland a "fair confirmation process" during a March 17 rally on the steps of the court building in Washington. Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, says he would nominate justices inclined to investigate Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. Photo by Leigh Vogel/UPI | License Photo

NEW YORK, March 30 (UPI) -- Donald Trump said he would select justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who would investigate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Trump made the remark about Clinton's "email disaster" a day after she tagged Trump for calling on a ban on all Muslims entering the United States. Clinton has used the remark to demonstrate to liberals in her party what she believes are Trump's extremist positions.


The Supreme Court justice selection has been at the top of the list of issues for candidates since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia several weeks ago.

President Barack Obama has nominated a federal appeals court judge, Merrick Garland, to fill the seat, but Republicans in the Senate have refused to move on the issue, preferring to wait and see if their party can capture the White House in November and pick their own judge.

Scalia was a reliably conservative vote on the court. His death and replacement by a liberal, or even centrist jurist could throw any number of cases Republicans have enjoyed support for on the court into jeopardy.

Just this week, a case with massive implications for labor unions, a core liberal constituency, ended in a 4-4 tie and, effectively, a victory for organized labor. Had Scalia been alive, he probably would have sided with the conservatives and handed California's teachers' unions a difficult loss.

With that as the background, Trump said he would appoint judges who are inclined to investigate what he sees as Clinton's wrongdoing.

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"Well, I'd probably appoint people that would look very seriously at her email disaster because it's a criminal activity, and I would appoint people that would look very seriously at that to start off with," Trump said in a phone interview with ABC's Good Morning America. "What she's getting away with is absolutely murder. You talk about a case— now that's a real case."

Supreme Court judges do not handle issues of criminality, only whether a person's complaint is a violation of someone's constitutional rights.

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