Man who Trump wants to be a federal judge used to be part of ghost hunting group
The nomination of Brett J Talley to a federal district court seat just keeps on getting stranger.
Mr Talley, who is awaiting Senate confirmation, has been under scrutiny since it was discovered that he has never tried a case in court, was once called unqualified by the American Bar Association, and failed to disclose in federal documents that he’s married to a White House lawyer.
But there’s at least one more bizarre line on Mr Talley’s resume: He used to spend his time investigating and writing about ghosts and paranormal activity in general.
The hobby, first noticed by the Daily Beast, was listed on the questionnaire he filled out for the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mr Talley wrote there that he was a member of The Tuscaloosa Paranormal Research Group from 2009-2010.
That group does exactly what anyone who has seen any of the shows in the popular “reality show about ghost hunters” genre: They try to find evidence of paranormal activity, or debunk the claims for the sorry residents of the home who are being tormented by their imaginations.
Dave Higdon, who is the founder of The Tuscaloosa Paranormal Research Group, told the Daily Beast that he couldn’t recall any specific cases that Mr Talley may have worked on with him.
“Mainly we may go into a house between seven at night and six in the morning, and stay up all night long, and see if we can see what’s going on,” Mr Higdon said of the what his group does. “If we go into a private house, we mainly try and debunk what’s going on.”
As it turns out, Mr Talley is also the author of books about paranormal activity, and has received a fair amount of praise for that body of work.
Mr Talley — a Harvard educated lawyer, to be sure — is one of many young, conservative judges who President Donald Trump has pushed to be placed on federal courts in an effort to dramatically reshape the federal judiciary.
