00:00Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Congratulations to the nominees. Thank you for being here. It's great, Mr. Ossetti, to
00:05see you and to see another Missourian on this panel. I think this will be number, I think, sixth district
00:11court nominee that President Trump has gotten to appoint out of the state of Missouri in the last year and
00:15a half, so that's a pretty good record.
00:18And you have such a strong advocate in former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who is a big believer in you.
00:26So he and I have had, he must have called me 15 times about your nomination. So anyway, he's, as
00:32I said to him when I talked to him on the phone, I said, John, anybody who you're for, I'm
00:36for. So anyway, he's a great man, and it's great to see that you've got his support.
00:42I just want to give you a chance to follow up on what Senator Durbin was asking you about a
00:46second ago, this article, and Senator Kennedy asked you about it, too. This article you wrote, were you in law
00:53school back in 2016, is that right, thereabouts?
00:56I was a 25-year-old law student, yes.
00:58And about Shelby County, and you said you disagreed with Shelby County. That's a decision written by my old boss
01:04at the Supreme Court. And at the time, you said you disagreed with it, and you didn't, you don't like
01:09voter ID, or you didn't like voter ID. But I think that, I thought I heard you say to Senator
01:14Durbin that your views have changed. Is that fair to say?
01:18That's correct, and I've litigated extensive matters defending voter ID laws like HB 1878 in 2022, when I was general
01:24counsel for the Secretary of State's office.
01:26Yeah, in Missouri. Because we have a voter ID law, a very strong one in the state of Missouri, and
01:32you've litigated in defense of that.
01:35Yes.
01:35Yeah. And so you mentioned poll taxes to Senator Kennedy, and you mentioned those in the article, but I just
01:42want to be clear, you're not comparing, your view now is you're not comparing voter ID to poll taxes. I
01:49mean, you think as a matter of law, those things are not equivalent.
01:51No, they're not. All I was explaining in that point, Senator, is that some of the opponents of voter ID
01:58today and some of the arguments they've made in court is to try to go back to, you know, some
02:03of the measures that were racially discriminatory and now outlawed, obviously, through constitutional amendments and trying to make comparisons.
02:10And, of course, that comparison doesn't hold water. Voter ID is a common sense election integrity measure, and I've had
02:15the honor of defending voter ID laws, both in federal court and in state court in Missouri.
02:20Good. Okay, good. I'm glad we got that cleared up. Let me give you a chance to clear up something
02:25else some pro-life folks in the state have raised.
02:28You said to Senator Kennedy you worked at Bryan Cave, a great Missouri law firm. I'm aware that Bryan Cave,
02:36as a matter of public record, represented a transgender clinic called Southampton Community Healthcare back some years ago, and I
02:46guess maybe you were there at the time at the firm, but you didn't represent that clinic. Is that correct,
02:51Mr. Osei?
02:51That's correct, Senator. I was an associate, and it was a client of the firm that other partners handled.
02:58Yeah, so I think they ended up suing the Attorney General, Andrew Bailey, I think maybe you worked for it
03:04for a while, to try to stop state regulations preventing transgender surgeries for minors, which I'm 100% in favor
03:12of those regulations.
03:14But that was, you were not involved, I just want to be real clear about this, you were not involved
03:19at all in that litigation, correct?
03:21No, Senator, on the merits of that litigation, no.
03:23Great. Anything else, Mr. Osei, you'd like to say about your judicial philosophy? Maybe you want to talk about something
03:33you learned from General Ashcroft, but talk about how you'd approach the job, and what your approach is to statutory
03:40interpretation. Just give us a sense about how you think about the law. Go ahead.
03:43Well, thank you, Senator, and again, it's really hard to believe that we're both sitting across from each other. I
03:49met you, it's been a long time since I met you at Holt Summit at your opening ceremony when you
03:53had just been sworn in as the Attorney General of Missouri, and I was a law clerk on the Missouri
03:57Supreme Court at the time, and it was just truly an honor, and so great to see everything you've done
04:02since 2016.
04:03I worked for some great judges, Zell Fisher and Bobby Shepard, who taught me how to look at statutes, look
04:09at the original meaning of a constitutional provision, look at its text, and having respect for the legislative bodies and
04:15the people that ratify the various provisions, both in the Constitution and statutes.
04:20And again, that's what I've learned, and so far, the best instrument, the best measure of constitutional interpretation and textual
04:29interpretation that I've come across is originalism, is textualism, it's a powerful interpretive method to, again, restrain otherwise unrestrained federal
04:42judges and other, even at the state level.
04:45And it's not a doctrine that's been developed, you know, tremendously at the state level, but I was very proud
04:50when I was clerking that we had a huge emphasis for going back to the text, going to the original
04:55meaning, going to the structure of the Constitution, going to what the people at the time thought they were passing,
05:01and they were in fact passing.
05:03So, I have great respect for the legislative process, I have great respect for the courts, and again, someone like
05:08me who, you know, was born in a country that didn't have the kind of robust protections, due process and
05:13otherwise, that we do have in this country.
05:15I'm just such a proud American, I've been able to witness that firsthand, and I'm so proud to be here
05:19as a district court nominee, and to have the opportunity to even apply those principles to begin with is quite
05:24an honor.
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