One of Trump's radical judge picks just got thrown into the Ukraine scandal

Yet another person could suffer fallout as a result of President Donald Trump's Ukraine scandal and subsequent impeachment inquiry: Steven Menashi, Trump's nominee for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals — and a key White House legal aide.

On Friday, the Huffington Post reported that four Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee, including ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), sent Menashi a letter demanding that he clarify any knowledge he had about the call, and giving him until October 7 to respond.

“We write to inquire about your knowledge of or involvement with any of the events related to a telephone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25, 2019, or a whistleblower complaint about that call and efforts to pressure Ukraine to interfere in the upcoming 2020 U.S. election,” said the letter.

Even before the Ukraine scandal, Menashi was a deeply controversial judicial nominee. He has criticized feminism and diversity, compared affirmative action to Nazi Germany, scorned anti-sexual assault protesters as "gynocentrists," claimed that financial aid for college students is unfair to rich people, accused the Human Rights Campaign of "exploiting" the death of gay student Matthew Shepard, and helped Education Secretary Betsy DeVos roll back campus civil rights protections for rape survivors. He is also opposed by both senators from his home state of New York, meaning Republicans would have to once again ignore the "blue slip" tradition to confirm him.

Even some Republicans have expressed reservations about how extreme Menashi is, and were put off by how rudely he behaved in his confirmation hearings. Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said, "I'm real doubtful" about supporting him, saying, "My thought is, look, if he'll treat a United States senator the way he treated us, I wonder how he would treat the people."