ICYMI: The Two-Pronged Attack on a Muslim Judicial Nominee

NEW YORK – In case you missed it, The New Yorker published a 2,500-word deep-dive into the baseless, Islamophobic smear campaign conducted by Senate Republicans against Mr. Adeel Mangi. When confirmed, Mr. Mangi will be first Muslim American to serve as a federal circuit court judge.

Key excerpts:

“When the Senate Judiciary Committee met for a hearing on two nominees to the federal bench, on the morning of December 13th, only one of them was considered controversial. Nicole Berner, a lawyer in her late fifties, had served as general counsel to the Service Employees International Union and, before that, as a staff attorney at Planned Parenthood. Biden had nominated her to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Virginia. ‘Historically, she’s the one who would get all the attention,’ a senior committee staffer told me, referring to Berner’s work on labor and reproductive rights. ‘This is stuff that tends to be red meat for Republicans.’ Sitting next to her, in glasses and a navy suit, was the other nominee, Adeel Mangi, a forty-six-year-old corporate lawyer from New Jersey.”

“By ten o’clock, as the hearing started, the room was unusually crowded. Berner’s supporters from the labor movement had turned out, expecting a showdown. The exchange went as predicted for half of the hearing, with the first five Republicans grilling Berner about her time with the union. But when it was Ted Cruz’s turn, two hours into the proceedings, he didn’t address Berner at all.”

“When it was Josh Hawley’s turn to address the nominees, a few minutes later, the inquisition continued. ‘Does Israel have a right to exist?’ ‘Should American Jews be safe in their homes and on their campuses?’ Would Mangi say whether he felt that Israel was a ‘violent colonialist state’? After the hearing, several members of the committee’s staff apologized to Mangi personally. ‘I’ve sat through hundreds and hundreds of these nominations,’ Dick Durbin, the chairman, went on to say. ‘I will tell you what happened in this committee . . . to this nominee is a new low.’”

“[During the January executive business meeting, a]t one point, Marsha Blackburn, a conservative hard-liner from Tennessee, held up a Washington Times op-ed that called Mangi ‘Hamas’ favorite judicial nominee.’ What Cornyn, Blackburn, and the others failed to mention was that, since the first hearing, prominent Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, had come to Mangi’s defense. These were hardly groups known for their tolerance of antisemites.”

“It wasn’t difficult to identify the source of the controversy…[after] the publication of a story in the Washington Free Beacon, an online right-wing news outlet, which claimed to have discovered Mangi’s connection to ‘a left-wing group with extensive ties to convicted cop killers.’ It ran on December 15, 2023, two days after Mangi’s Senate hearing.”

“Senators had a week to submit further written questions to the nominees. Yet, among the three hundred and twenty-eight follow-up questions Mangi received, not one of them mentioned his affiliation with [this group]. In the January committee vote, the issue didn’t come up once. To my Senate sources, the disparity—another line of attack that none of Mangi’s Republican opponents felt the need to take up—was proof that those fighting his nomination were willing to dredge up anything.”

“All through the winter, vulnerable Democrats in Montana and Pennsylvania were targeted with digital ads accusing Mangi of antisemitism. One of them, run by the Judicial Crisis Network, included footage from 9/11.”

“Mangi himself won’t speak to the press while he’s still, technically, under the consideration of the full Senate. His most vocal defender has been his home-state senator, Cory Booker, who first brought him to the attention of the White House. We spoke on Tuesday, as Booker was returning from a trip to Nevada, where he’d just attended a fund-raiser for a House member. ‘I did not see this coming,’ he told me.”

“He likened Mangi to Ketanji Brown Jackson—someone who, in Booker’s estimation, wasn’t just ‘eminently qualified’ but also radiated a sense of uncommon decency. Booker referred to this quality, in Mangi, as the ‘apple-pie earnestness’ of his ‘American story.’ He added, ‘I could just see the moment he was sworn in.’”

“After Mangi’s hearing, Booker printed out the transcript of Cruz’s questions and read parts of it aloud, first to his colleagues behind closed doors, and then on the Senate floor. Each time, he told me, he did it ‘without injecting any emotion, just reading the dry transcript. It was so on-its-face appalling. . . . It was so stark.’”

“‘This is not over,’ Booker said. ‘The reality in politics is that things change. People have been known to change their minds. People have been known to give an honest consideration of facts. I hope this is not an epitaph.’”

Read the full piece here.

Mr. Mangi was nominated by President Biden on November 15, 2023; had his nomination hearing in Committee on December 13, 2023; and was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 18, 2024.

Despite unequivocally denouncing any acts of antisemitism or bigotry, Mr. Mangi was subjected to combative lines of questioning by multiple Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans about the Israel-Hamas war and was even asked how he celebrated the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks during his nomination hearing.  Numerous Jewish organizations representing more than one million Jewish Americans have voiced support for his historic nomination – including the American Jewish Committee, the National Council for Jewish Women, and a coalition of 15 Jewish organizations.

Additionally, Mr. Mangi has been subjected to false claims about his association with the Alliance of Families for Justice. Senate Republicans have peddled false assertions that Mr. Mangi defended “cop killers,” when he has never said or written anything to suggest that he supports such individuals nor represented or provided legal counsel to anyone accused of killing a police officer. To the contrary, Senate Republicans are creating a double standard on this issue after voting unanimously to confirm multiple judges during the Trump Administration who had personally represented “cop killers.” Law enforcement groups, labor advocates, and local and state leaders have all endorsed the confirmation of Mr. Mangi.

View and download all letters of support for Mr. Mangi here.

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