Trump Court Picks Now Cite Justice Jackson on 2020 Election (1)

Donald Trump’s judicial nominees took a new tack in answering Democrats’ questions on the outcome of the 2020 election, drawing on Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s response to a similar query during her own confirmation vetting.

Appellate picks Ben Flowers and Matthew Schwartz both picked up on a Republican thread at their Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday that aims to blunt what Trump allies claim are disingenuous efforts by Democrats to paint his nominees as beholden to him.

Jackson, in a 2022 written response to a question during her own confirmation process about her views on the result of the election that Trump says was stolen from him, said it wasn’t proper for her to comment on political matters.

“Senator, I think the answer that Justice Jackson gave is the only legally and ethically correct one,” Schwartz, a Trump attorney with Sullivan & Cromwell and Second Circuit nominee, said in response to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) at the Judiciary Committee hearing.

Flowers, a former Ohio solicitor general nominated for a seat on the Sixth Circuit, told the panel that it would be inappropriate to comment on the outcome of any election, also noting Jackson’s written response to the question.

Nominees in Trump’s second term have largely skirted questions from Democrats regarding the election, saying uniformly that Joe Biden was certified as the winner of the 2020 vote and that it would be improper to comment on a matter of political debate.

Democrats bristle at the answer to a question they view as a litmus test for whether judicial nominees are willing to defy Trump once on the bench. They’ve complained that prospective judges’ unwillingness to state that Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden calls into question their independence.

Republicans have pushed back, with Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) opening the hearing by deriding Democrats for attacking nominees over what he said were “legally correct” answers.

Grassley showed a poster quoting Jackson, who wrote that “as a pending judicial nominee and a sitting federal judge, it would be inappropriate for me to publicly weigh in any subject of political debate.”

Blumenthal criticized the nominees’ responses, which he said had obviously been rehearsed. Both nominees said they had worked with the White House Counsel’s Office to prepare for the hearing.

“Above all, a federal judge must be independent, without fear or favor. And you fear, apparently, Donald Trump, so much that you practiced with the White House before you came here,” Blumenthal said.

Trump Lawyer

Neither nominee faced difficult questions from either side about their prospective role as judges, but Schwartz was singled out by Democrats over his representation of Trump. He’s the third of the president’s circuit nominees to serve as a personal attorney for him.

Schwartz has been involved in an appeal of Trump’s New York state conviction for hiding a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, as well as a case where he was found liable for inflating the value of his real estate assets.

During the hearing, Schwartz said he would recuse from cases where he had represented Trump if confirmed to the New York-based appeals court.

Sen. Cory Booker (D.-N.J.) probed Schwartz about his financial relationship with the president as a lawyer while under consideration for a judgeship and potentially serving, if confirmed.

“My firm has revenues of almost $2 billion a year,” Schwartz said. “The amount that we take in, or might take in from President Trump, I don’t know how much that is, but it would be an extraordinarily small amount.”

He added that he would resign from the firm if confirmed and as a result would not make any money going forward from the firm’s representation of Trump.