Political News

President Meets Four Finalists for Supreme Court Seat

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump interviewed four candidates to take Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s place on the Supreme Court on Monday as the White House raced to meet the president’s promise to announce a replacement for the retiring justice early next week.

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Two Judges Exemplify the Choice Trump Faces in a Supreme Court Pick
By
Michael D. Shear
and
Maggie Haberman, New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump interviewed four candidates to take Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s place on the Supreme Court on Monday as the White House raced to meet the president’s promise to announce a replacement for the retiring justice early next week.

The White House refused to disclose the names of whom the president met with, but according to people briefed on the vetting process, they were the federal appeals court judges Amy Coney Barrett of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Brett M. Kavanaugh of the District of Columbia Circuit, and Raymond M. Kethledge and Amul R. Thapar of the 6th Circuit. The president met alone with each of them for 45 minutes.

Thapar, the son of Indian-American immigrants, was Trump’s first nominee to an appeals court in 2017. A former district court judge from Kentucky with a conservative track record, Thapar was among those the president considered as a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016.

Kavanaugh, an appointee of President George W. Bush who also worked in Bush’s White House, clerked at the Supreme Court for Kennedy. He was also a prosecutor under the independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, who investigated President Bill Clinton.

Trump has expressed a desire to name a woman to the court, and Barrett is a favorite of religious conservatives. Deeply religious and a former law clerk for Scalia, she once argued that Catholic judges should sometimes recuse themselves from sentencing in death penalty cases.

Kethledge also clerked for Kennedy, and has the support of some conservative activists. A graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, Kethledge does not have the Harvard or Yale pedigree that Trump has told associates he would like to see in the next justice.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said Trump did not meet with any other candidates over the weekend, and with less than a week before Trump’s self-imposed deadline of next Monday to announce his choice to succeed Kennedy, who announced his resignation Wednesday, the White House has embarked on a vetting and public relations effort that in past administrations has taken weeks.

But Sanders said that teams of lawyers from the counsel’s office and the Justice Department have begun compiling volumes of research on the finalists and that key staff members will spend the summer focused entirely on winning confirmation of whoever Trump eventually chooses. And Democrats have responded to the accelerated White House effort by immediately targeting judges widely believed to be on the president’s shortlist. “I had a very, very interesting morning,” Trump said, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office before a meeting with Mark Rutte, the prime minister of the Netherlands.

Trump said that all of the people he had talked to about the job were “outstanding people,” but he gave no hint about who he might choose. “They are really incredible people in so many different ways — academically, and every other way,” Trump said.

Trump said he most likely would meet with two or three other candidates before making his decision. A list of the names of those interviewed on Monday was earlier reported by the Above the Law blog and The Washington Post.

The candidates interviewed Monday are among a group of federal appeals court judges who are believed to be finalists to replace Kennedy. All are on a broader list of 25 people, mostly conservative judges, from which Trump has publicly said he will choose.

The president’s short list appears to also include Thomas M. Hardiman of the 3rd Circuit, William H. Pryor Jr. of the 11th Circuit and Joan L. Larsen of the 6th Circuit.

Even without a name, Democrats on Monday began focusing on the backgrounds and rulings of the finalists, stressing their likely opposition to the Affordable Care Act and predicting that any of them would support overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case establishing the constitutional right to an abortion.

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the top Democratic senator, took direct aim at Barrett on Twitter, accusing her of supporting the idea of rearguing the abortion precedent.

“The bottom line: Judge Barrett has given every indication that she will be an activist judge on the Court,” Schumer wrote in one of a series of tweets. “If chosen as the nominee, she will be the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and to strike down pre-existing conditions protections in the ACA.”

Schumer and other Democrats have insisted that Trump’s choice for the court must be pressed during hearings to specifically say whether they would join a majority in the court to end abortion rights.

But Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, responded to that demand Monday by highlighting quotes from liberal justices saying during their confirmation hearings that it would be inappropriate to talk about specific cases. McConnell said such comments amounted to “the Ginsburg Standard,” named after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judicial process,” Ginsburg said during her 1993 hearings to be on the court. She added, “Were I to rehearse here what I would say and how I would reason on such questions, I would act injudiciously.”

Democratic strategists are also eager to highlight Trump’s statements about abortion during the 2016 campaign. In one debate, Trump said he would appoint two or three anti-abortion justices to the court, so a more conservative majority could overturn Roe v. Wade.

“That will happen automatically in my opinion,” Trump said during a debate with Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent in the October 2016 debate.

In an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox News, broadcast on Sunday, he said he “probably” would not ask his Supreme Court candidates about their views of the case.

“Well, that’s a big one. And probably not,” Trump told Bartiromo. “They are all saying don’t do that. You don’t do that. You shouldn’t do that.”

He added, “But I’m putting conservative people on.”

In 2017, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, the president’s first pick for the Supreme Court, replacing Scalia, was asked whether Trump ever asked him to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“I would have walked out the door,” Gorsuch said. “That’s not what judges do.”

At the White House on Monday, Sanders, the press secretary, repeatedly said Trump had not asked candidates for the court to say how they would rule on specific cases.

“He’s looking for individuals that have the right intellect, the right temperament, and that will uphold the Constitution,” Sanders told reporters.

In the meantime, White House officials said, Trump will temporarily reorganize his White House staff to focus on confirming a new justice by the time the court’s new term opens in October.

Raj Shah, a deputy press secretary, will take a leave from his responsibilities in the press office to focus exclusively on coordinating the president’s message on behalf of the pick, Sanders said.

Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, will lead the process, Sanders said, and will be aided by a team of lawyers in the counsel’s office and another at the Department of Justice, which will help in vetting the candidates and preparing the nominee for hearings. The job of working with conservative organizations outside the White House will fall to Justin Clark, the director of the Office of Public Liaison, Sanders said.

“Teams of attorneys from the White House Counsel’s Office and Department of Justice are working to ensure the president has all the information he needs to choose his nominee,” Sanders said in a statement. “The Department of Justice is fully engaged to support the nomination and confirmation efforts.”

The staff deployment is a reflection of the seriousness with which the White House takes the task of winning a quick confirmation. While Republicans control the Senate, they have only a one-vote margin, and McConnell has made it clear he wants to bring the nomination to a vote before the November congressional elections.

Others in the White House, including Marc Short, the director of legislative affairs, and John F. Kelly, the chief of staff, will also be involved in the process, she said.

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