Florida Judge Sided with Trump While Advocating for Nomination

A Florida state judge was angling for a federal judicial nomination from Donald Trump when he sided with the president in a defamation case before his court.

Ed Artau, who’s now under consideration for South Florida’s US trial court, met with the White House roughly two weeks after he wrote his February concurring opinion allowing Trump’s defamation suit against the Pulitzer Prize Board to proceed, according to his Senate Judiciary Questionnaire made public by Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog group. The disclosure was first reported Friday by Politico.

The timing of Trump’s announcement that he’d tapped Artau for the federal bench soon after the judge’s decision in the case raised concerns about his impartiality in the defamation case and the process by which he was chosen.

According to the disclosure, Artau met with Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) general counsel on Nov. 14 to discuss his interest in appointment to the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida. After Sen. Ashley Moody’s (R-Fla.) appointment to replace Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Artau reached out to her office about his interest as well. The senators later told Artau that they’d sent his name to the White House for consideration.

On Feb. 12, the appellate court Artau serves on published his opinion in favor of Trump’s case against the Pulitzer Board, which alleges that the board defamed him by refusing to rescind reporting prizes for coverage on Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election. Artau interviewed with the White House Counsel’s Office on Feb. 27 and they later told him he was under consideration.

He met with Trump on May 27 and a day later the president announced the planned nomination, according to Artau’s responses in the questionnaire.

Just below his responses on the timeline of his selection process, he said that no one involved in the process of selecting him had discussed with him any “currently pending or specific case, legal issue or question in a manner that could reasonably be interpreted as seeking any express or implied assurances concerning your position on such case, issue, or question.”

The disclosure comes as Trump’s picks for key appointments to the federal government have faced questions on whether their loyalty was to the president or to upholding the law. Several of his nominees have hedged their responses to questions about the winner of the 2020 presidential election that Trump continues to dispute.