Progressive critics of U.S. Sen. Angus King have a question for Maine’s junior senator: Why vote for President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees who won’t clearly say he lost the 2020 presidential election?

King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, has voted for six Trump nominees whom the Senate eventually confirmed as federal district court judges — none of whom directly said Trump lost when asked in confirmation hearings, according to the progressive legal advocacy group Demand Justice.

The six nominees King voted for used similar language during their confirmation hearings, noting that Biden was “certified” as the winner of the 2020 race against Trump. Several said it would not be appropriate to comment further, such as U.S. District Court Judge Harold Mooty III.

“If this question asks me to comment on the broader political or policy debate regarding the 2020 presidential election, it would be inappropriate for me to do so as a judicial nominee,” Mooty said.

King has also opposed 28 judicial nominees during the Republican president’s second term.

A recent report from Demand Justice highlighted the comments from the nominees and noted Trump’s repeated and baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

“Trump insisting he won in 2020 is sort of the defining myth of who he is politically now,” Demand Justice President Josh Orton said in a phone interview. “And you can’t exist in his orbit and tell the emperor he’s naked.”

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, a Senate Judiciary Committee member, also blasted nominees last week for giving “canned responses” when he asked them who won that race.

King, who comfortably won reelection in 2024 to a third term, has repeatedly warned that Trump is violating the Constitution, but he’s taken progressive flak for also voting to confirm controversial members of Trump’s Cabinet in both his first and second terms.

King’s office defended his votes, saying he weighed each candidate thoroughly. Spokesperson Matthew Felling on Monday noted King’s “significant disagreements with this administration’s thoughts on the judicial process, which is why he voted against 28 out of the 34 judges the administration put forward for consideration.”

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has voted for every Trump judicial nominee in his second term except for former Trump lawyer Emil Bove. During Biden’s one term, she opposed a greater percentage of his judicial nominees than she did for any of the previous four presidents. (Collins spokesperson Blake Kernen said in a statement after this story was initially published that Collins evaluates judges based on the merits, “she does not base her votes on whether the nominee was selected by a Democratic president or a Republican president.”)

Demand Justice, based in Washington, D.C., acknowledged in its report that judicial nominees have historically “avoided providing direct answers on questions of unsettled law or constitutional interpretation that may come before them if confirmed.”

But the more “evasive” answers about the winner of a presidential election is without precedent, Orton said.

“Senators have an opportunity to show their constituents that they’re paying attention to this and that these are actually extraordinary times,” Orton said. He argued there is “no chance” Republicans would vote for Democratic nominees if they were to give vague answers about Trump’s election victories in 2024 or 2016.

Nineteen Democratic senators have voted to confirm at least one of Trump’s judicial nominees who “gave dishonest or misleading information” about the 2020 election and the Capitol riot, per Demand Justice — with Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Tim Kaine of Virginia topping the list by supporting eight each.

Among the nominees-turned-judges whom King voted to confirm are Josh Divine of Missouri. King called his vote for Divine “a mistake” last summer, and said he had not been fully aware of Divine’s anti-abortion views. Facing progressive backlash, King acknowledged he had voted for Divine based on the advice of U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri.

Apart from Mooty and Divine, the other nominees mentioned in the Demand Justice report for their 2020 election responses who earned King’s vote are: U.S. District Judges Lindsey Freeman of North Carolina, Bill Lewis of Alabama, Susan Courtright Rodriguez of North Carolina and Alexander Van Hook of Louisiana.

The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced most of those nominations with support from at least one Democratic senator. Divine’s nomination was the exception: He received a party-line recommendation.

King is not a member of the committee, but his office pointed to those bipartisan votes in defending his decisions to support the six judicial nominees.

“When Sen. King analyzes each nominee, he puts significant weight on whether judges earn bipartisan support from his colleagues on the Judiciary Committee,” Felling said.