Republican senators on Wednesday accused U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit nominee Kevin Gafford Ritz of acting unethically in his role as a federal prosecutor in Tennessee, allegations that Ritz consistently denied throughout his partisan confirmation hearing.

Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and his GOP colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee raised a case Ritz handled in which a public defender accused the then-assistant U.S. attorney in an email of making misrepresentations to a defense attorney to elicit a guilty plea.