Muslim Judge Pick Mangi Blasts ‘Swamp’ That Sunk Nomination (1)

Adeel Mangi decried the “farcical attacks” he faced as a nominee to be the first Muslim federal circuit court judge, following a Senate deal that scuttled chances of a confirmation vote.

“American Muslims are part of this nation’s fabric and will not cower,” Mangi wrote in a letter Monday to President Joe Biden, obtained by Bloomberg Law. “This campaign was intended to make it intolerable for Muslims proud of their identity to serve this nation. It will fail.”

Mangi, a partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler in New York who is of Pakistani-descent, was nominated to the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in November 2023.

His nomination reflects the Biden administration’s push to expand the diversity of the federal judiciary. But Mangi quickly became the target of conservative-led opposition as Republican senators accused the Harvard and Oxford-educated litigator of associating himself with antisemitic and antipolice organizations, roughly a month after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israeli civilians last year.

“We have a fundamentally broken process for choosing federal judges. This is no longer a system for evaluating fitness for judicial office,” Mangi wrote. “It is now a channel for the raising of money based on performative McCarthyism before video cameras, and for the dissemination of dark-money-funded attacks that especially target minorities.”

Opposition Campaign

In the letter, Mangi questioned “who will give up the rewards of private sector success for public service, if the added price is character assassination and wading through a Senatorial swamp like this one?”

“This process must be reinvented to protect nominees from threats both reputational and physical in an era of Congressional dishonor where disinformation reigns and all decency has been abandoned,” he added.

Conservatives had drawn attention to Mangi’s past affiliation with a Rutgers Law School center they say has platformed pro-terrorism and antisemitic material about the Israel-Hamas war and 9/11. Those critics also cite Mangi’s connection to a criminal justice non-profit with ties to Kathy Boudin, who was convicted for her involvement in a notorious 1981 Brink’s armored truck robbery that resulted in two police killings.

Specifically, critics centered his time on the advisory board for the Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights between 2019 and 2023 to question his views on the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack, and the ongoing Israeli-Hamas conflict. They later targeted his advisory board member membership for the Alliance of Families for Justice, which he joined at the invitation of the organization following his pro bono representation of a prison inmate who was allegedly killed by prison guards.

Mangi condemned the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel as “a horror involving the deaths of innocent civilians,” and also said during his confirmation hearing that he only advised the Rutgers center on academic research issues for a board that meets only once a year. He said he was neither involved nor aware of the events characterized by Republicans as radical.

He later defended himself against what he described as “baseless accusations” that he’s anti-law enforcement.

Democrats such as New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, and Senate Judiciary Chair and Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois came to Mangi’s defense. And the White House called the opposition to Mangi a “cruel, Islamophobic, smear campaign.” A spokesperson for the administration didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the recent Mangi letter.

Amid a competitive election cycle, Nevada’s Democratic senators and Democrat-turned-Independent Joe Manchin of West Virginia publicly opposed Mangi, enough to sink the Third Circuit nomination. The Nevada lawmakers cited his connection to the Alliance of Families for Justice.

“I will not assume the worst possible motivation for their embrace of this attack,” Mangi wrote. “But to me that leaves two possibilities: that these Senators lack the wisdom to discern the truth, which exposes a catastrophic lack of judgment; or they used my nomination to court conservative voters in an election year, which exposes a catastrophic lack of principle.”

Path Forward

Mangi doesn’t formally withdraw his nomination in the letter, but he does say “there is now no pathway to confirmation for any appellate nominees” following a Senate agreement between both parties that denies floor votes for all of Biden’s remaining circuit picks in exchange for his district court nominees to advance without Republican stalling tactics.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) office confirmed that the appellate nominees, including Mangi, didn’t have the votes for confirmation in the last remaining weeks of Biden’s presidency. The Third Circuit New Jersey vacancy will now go to President-elect Donald Trump.

“For my part, I entered this nomination process as a proud American and a proud Muslim. I exit it the same way, unbowed,” Mangi wrote.