On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Wolf,” Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) stated that Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court is a “court-packing scheme.” And that if Gorsuch was principled, “he would have turned down this nomination, on the basis that the person who should be nominated is Merrick Garland.”

Merkley said he would vote against Gorsuch because “I’m not going to be part of a court-packing scheme. This seat, for the first time in US history, was stolen from one president and delivered to the next, with the hope of packing the court to the far right. And with Gorsuch, we’re talking to the very far right.” Merkley further said that if Gorsuch was principled, “he would have turned down this nomination, on the basis that the person who should be nominated is Merrick Garland.”

He later added, “[I]f one doesn’t care about the integrity of the court, and you just want to look at this nominee from a judicial perspective, we have two other significant problems with him. The first is that the president’s team is under investigation for having potentially interfered in the US presidential election. If that turns out to be true, that is traitorous conduct. And that means that this conversation should be set aside until that is cleared up. And the second is, Gorsuch is way out of the mainstream. He hates class action lawsuits. He doesn’t want the LGBT community to be able to use the courts to end discrimination. He finds and twists a lot to find corporations — for corporations against ordinary citizens time after time after time.”

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