Adeel Mangi on Monday criticized the "organized smear campaign" that derailed his nomination to become the nation's first Muslim federal appeals court judge, telling President Joe Biden his failure to win confirmation showed the judicial appointment process was "fundamentally broken."
Mangi, a nominee to serve on the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a letter to Democratic President Joe Biden thanked him for his support even as he conceded no viable path remained for him to be confirmed after Democrats and Republicans in the Senate struck a deal on judicial nominations post-election.
Under the deal, Democrats agreed to not push forward with votes to confirm four appellate court nominees, including Mangi, in exchange for votes on a dozen district court nominees proceeding to the full Senate.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's office has said that all four lacked sufficient votes to get confirmed. In Mangi's case, three Senate Democrats had already announced they would join with Republicans in voting against him.
The failure of Mangi's nomination means that Republican President-elect Donald Trump will be able to fill that 3rd Circuit seat instead. The court currently has seven Republican appointees, six Democratic appointees and one vacancy.
Mangi had been nominated to fill that vacancy, which was created by the retirement of U.S. Circuit Judge Joseph Greenaway, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama. A nominee by Trump could shift the 3rd Circuit ideologically further to the right.
Mangi, a New Jersey resident and partner at the law firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, in his letter said going into the nomination process, he had been prepared to address questions about his qualifications, philosophy and legal issues.
But he said he was instead subjected to "performative outrage" by Senate Republicans and "spurious online assaults" that appeared centered around his identity as a Muslim and that were deemed Islamophobic by his defenders.
During a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in December 2023, Republican committee members prodded him about his views on the Israel-Hamas war and the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.
Republicans also focused on how Mangi formerly sat on an advisory board for Rutgers Law School's Center for Security, Race and Rights, whose director has taken stances supporting Palestinians and which hosted a 2021 event on the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attack featuring controversial speakers.
"The underlying premise appeared to be that because I am Muslim, surely I support terrorism and celebrate 9-11," Mangi wrote, calling the claims false.
He said the judicial nomination process is broken and has become 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."
"Nominees pay the price — and so too does our nation," he said. "Who will give up the rewards of private sector success for public service, if the added price is character assassination and wading though a Senatorial swamp like this one?"
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