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After an intense Republican messaging campaign and a last-minute Senate deal tanked his nomination, Mangi told President Biden that the process for selecting federal judicial nominees is “fundamentally broken.”
WASHINGTON (CN) — Congressional Democrats on Tuesday offered mixed responses to an ill-fated White House judicial nominee’s scathing comments about the selection process for federal court appointments.
Adeel Mangi, tapped last year by President Joe Biden to join the Third Circuit, made waves Monday when he told the White House in a sharply worded letter that judicial selection procedures in the Senate are “fundamentally broken.”
The nominee, who is Muslim and of Pakistani descent, argued he had faced a “smear campaign” from Republicans and conservative organizations which attempted to paint him as a terrorist sympathizer and as opposed to law enforcement.
Mangi also slammed a deal between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican leaders which put his nomination permanently on ice. The agreement, inked last month, saw Democrats agree to spike confirmation votes on Mangi’s appointment and those of three other White House appellate nominees in exchange for speedy votes on a tranche of federal district court picks.
“The strength of the Senate’s collective commitment to principle stands revealed,” Mangi fumed to Biden.
But on Tuesday, Schumer offered little consolation to the nominee. Asked by Courthouse News during a news conference for his reaction to Mangi’s letter, the Democratic leader said it was “regrettable” that he could not be confirmed.
“My reaction is that we didn’t have the votes to put him on the floor,” Schumer said. “I was supportive of him.”
Indeed, it was an open question for months as to whether Mangi had enough Democratic support to survive a confirmation vote on the closely divided Senate floor. At least two lawmakers, Nevada Senators Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, said publicly that they would not vote for the nominee.
The Silver State Democrats pointed to concerns from law enforcement about Mangi’s affiliation with a reform-minded prison advocacy group — a connection raised by Republicans and played down by the nominee himself.
And with West Virginia Joe Manchin refusing at the time to consider Biden nominees without Republican support, Mangi’s nomination languished on the Senate floor for months until it was finally scuttled by Schumer’s agreement with the GOP.
While the Senate’s top Democrat had little reaction to Mangi’s scathing indictment of judicial selection, other lawmakers argued the real issue was people, not process.
Georgia Representative Hank Johnson, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee’s courts subpanel, told Courthouse News on Tuesday that it was “unfortunate that an appointee would be stereotyped” by lawmakers based on religion or national origin.
“Those are not factors that should come into play when evaluating the qualities and qualifications of someone appointed to a federal judgeship,” he said. “It cheapens the confirmation process by letting it fall into a forum for bigots to attack a nominee based on his national origin, religion or any other demographic factors.”
But while Mangi told Biden in his Monday letter that the judicial selection process should be “reinvented” to protect nominees from the kind of character assault he faced, Johnson argued partisanship was at the root of the problem.
“We need to elect a better caliber of individual to be leading us in the United States Senate,” he said. “The Senate is supposed to be a deliberative body … they’re supposed to be very careful, deliberate, mature in their judgment — almost apolitical.”
But Congress’ upper chamber has become increasingly polarized, Johnson observed, adding that senators have become even more “unrestrained” in their politics than in the House.
“That’s unfortunate,” he said.
Mangi, meanwhile, told Biden Monday that the current process for confirming judicial nominees could dissuade people of diverse backgrounds from seeking positions in the federal judiciary, especially given what he called an “incoming tsunami” of racism and discrimination — an apparent allusion to President-elect Donald Trump and Congress’ all-Republican majority set to take power in January.
The Third Circuit nominee wasn’t the only Biden appointment to get the axe last month. As part of his deal with Republicans, Schumer agreed to hold off voting on Fourth Circuit nominee Ryan Park, Sixth Circuit nominee Karla Campbell and First Circuit nominee Julia Lipez.
The top Senate Democrat framed the move as a win at the time, arguing that the appellate nominees did not have enough support to be confirmed and that he had guaranteed the White House triple the number of appointments in the form of federal district court nominees.
Critics, though, argued Democrats could likely have forced through some of the sacrificed circuit court appointments as well as the lower court nominees — and that Schumer’s agreement handed the incoming Trump administration a tranche of vital appellate appointments.
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