Retired Republican judge joins fight against ‘centerpiece’ of Trump’s effort to overturn election results
A retired Republican judge, who helped President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the results in the 2016 election by claiming more than two million illegal votes, says he is ready to join the fight to combat the administration’s “lies” and the “lies” of the mainstream media.
“I am prepared to join the resistance and challenge the lies and the lies of the media. I am ready, willing, and able. That’s why I am here. I am here to tell the truth and challenge the lies of the administration,” said Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who was a visiting professor at New York University School of Law, which is now known as its Law School.
Sullivan, 75, now running for the open seat in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, made the comments in New York, in a Facebook post on Nov. 29, 2020.
The judge was born on a farm near Winterset, Iowa — about 85 miles southwest of Iowa City. His family moved to Winterset when he was 3 years old and settled in a new area, according to his campaign website.
It was in Winterset that Sullivan’s father started a construction company that developed the new and original Winterset High School, one of the first school’s building project in the state.
He worked there for 17 years, first as an assistant to his father, then as a principal.
An avid sports fan, he had a front row seat to the Iowa Hawkeyes’ basketball players like Michael Jordan, Bill Bradley, and Charles Barkley — who signed him as a free agent in 1972. A year later, he played pro basketball in the Continental Basketball Assn.
“I remember Charles Barkley trying to run down the court — he kept running into the backboard, and Charles Barkley was one of my heroes,” Sullivan said.
After leaving the University of Iowa, he played minor league baseball as a farm boy player with the Altoona Curve (now Altoona Curve of the short-season New York Mets) in 1980. He played with the San Diego Chargers for 6 years, and then with the Kansas City Royals for 8 years.
After retiring from baseball in 1992, he was hired in 1993 as a district court judge in the state of Montana.
In 1999, the Montana state legislature passed a