Islamophobia Led to an Open Appeals Court Seat, Trump is Attempting to Fill it with a Lackey

In March 2024, amidst a wave of Islamophobic attacks on Adeel Mangi, former President Joe Biden's nominee for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, three Democratic U.S. Senators announced their opposition to Mangi's nomination. This seat would, as a result, go unfilled through the remainder of Biden's presidency and continued to be empty when cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump assumed office. This week, Trump announced his nomination of Emil Bove, his former defense attorney, for the lifetime appointment. Thanks to the actions of the three Democrats, Catherine Cortez-Masto, Joe Manchin, and Jacky Rosen, a seat that could have been filled by a respected and widely experienced jurist will now potentially be occupied by a partisan political hack who puts his loyalty to Trump above the law.

There is no question that Mangi was qualified for the job. Educated at Oxford and Harvard, Mangi had been working as a corporate lawyer for the firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP. In 2010, he had become the youngest associate to have been made a partner of the firm. In addition to representing an array of Fortune 500 clients, Mangi established a laudable pro bono record working on behalf of civil rights cases. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy called Mangi an "outstanding" choice. Senator Cory Booker, who had known Mangi for years, said that he had "seen firsthand that he is a person of integrity and deep conviction with an unflinching commitment to fairness and equality." Mangi was given a unanimous “Well Qualified” rating by the American Bar Association. His nomination was supported by groups such as the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, National LGBTQ+ Bar Association, and the National Council of Jewish Women.

Mangi should have been easily confirmed. However, Mangi is Muslim. In fact, had he been confirmed, Mangi would have been the first Muslim American ever to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals. This created an opening that Republicans were quick to seize. During his confirmation hearing, Mangi was asked by Senator Ted Cruz whether he condemned the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel. Mangi is a Pakistani American with no connection to Hamas or Palestinians other than that he is Muslim. Senator Tom Cotton took a similar approach, asking Mangi, "Do you believe that Zionist settler colonialism was a provocation that justified Hamas’ atrocity against Jews in Israel?" Senator John Kennedy, whose shtick is to act like an ignorant bumpkin, despite being educated at Vanderbilt, the University of Virginia, and Oxford, used his folksy southern drawl to suggest that Mangi celebrates the September 11 attacks. Republicans then began a wave of attack ads targeting Democratic Senators who were up for reelection, suggesting that Mangi was antisemitic. This despite the fact that groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee supported him.

While court nominees can be confirmed with a simple majority, the thin Democratic margin at the time meant that few votes could be lost. Cortez-Masto first announced her opposition. Then Joe Manchin, and finally, Rosen, who was facing reelection. While none of the three admitted basing their opposition on Mangi's religion — Machin claimed he opposed Mangi due to a lack of bipartisan support and Cortez-Masto and Rosen, using a very spurious argument, both claimed Mangi was anti-police — the fact that the vast majority of attacks on Mangi were Islamophobic could not be ignored. On November 21, 2024, Senator Chuck Schumer announced that he had agreed to withhold a floor vote on Mangi in exchange for Republicans allowing several other nominations to go forward. Mangi, seeing that his nomination would go nowhere, requested that it be withdrawn.

It's bad enough that Democrats did not take this opportunity to fill the seat with a historic and worthy nominee in the form of Mangi, but then they simply ignored it. Seats on Courts of Appeal are extremely important. As Chris Geidner of the excellent "Law Dork" newsletter writes, Courts of Appeal "often, in essence, have the final say on what the law means for people within that circuit because the U.S. Supreme Court hears so few cases." This is the type of seat that Democrats left for Trump to fill. I don't know what they were expecting, but I doubt that even in their worst nightmares they were expecting Emil Bove.

Bove had served as Trump's defense attorney, defending him in the classified documents and election obstruction cases. After Trump's election, Trump appointed Bove to be the acting deputy attorney general. One of Bove's first actions was to fire Department of Justice attorneys who had been involved with January 6 cases. But the case that most clearly showed Bove's willingness to put partisan politics above the law involved New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Adams had been indicted for several crimes involving illegal payments from Turkey. After Trump's election, Adams began appealing to Trump in hopes of winning a pardon. But a pardon proved to be unnecessary. Instead, Bove simply ordered the U.S. attorneys in New York to drop the charges. Bove "admitted that it’s [the dismissal] not based on the merits of the case and instead is designed to allow Adams to focus on assisting the Trump administration in its signature initiative of deporting undocumented individuals." Bove's action was so purely political and the antithesis of how the justice system should work that the attorneys in New York refused to comply. Eventually, fully 7 of them would resign rather than undertake Bove's request.

The issue with Bove is not that he would be a "Republican judge". Democrats routinely support Republican judges. The problem with Bove is that he would put loyalty to Trump above the rule of law. As in the case of Adams, when the law suggests one thing and Trump suggests another, Bove will side with Trump. This is the exact opposite of what is needed for the independent judiciary branch of our government. If you don't believe me about the threat that Bove presents, consider what Gregg Nunziata has to say. Nunziata is a former chief nominations counsel to Senate Republicans. As Nunziata says, "Confirming principled conservatives who look to the law, not politics, has been much of my life's work. Emil Bove is the opposite of that, and it should be no comfort that his politics are Right rather than Left." He went on to write that "This is not about Right or Left. I'm very proud of my work to confirm conservative judges. This is about confirming only people who understand the judicial role and not degrading our judiciary with partisan hacks and presidential toadies."

It is commendable that conservatives such as Nunziata are willing to publicly oppose Bove. Whether he and those like him will have any impact on Senate Republicans will remain to be seen. We can be sure that faux country bumpkin Kennedy will not be questioning him about September 11, and Cruz will not bring up Hamas. Neither Cortez-Masto nor Rosen sit on the Judiciary Committee, and Machin is out of the Senate. So, none of them will have to go face-to-face with the results of their previous actions. For her part, Rosen is currently in Israel, having herself photographed shaking hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu has been indicted for war crimes and is currently leading a genocide. He is also on trial in his own country for corruption. The moral qualms that Rosen claimed when it came to Mangi don't seem to be anywhere in evidence. I don't think that shame is an emotion that exists among U.S. Senators, but I suspect that we would be better off if it did.