Op-Ed: Robert Luther: Joe Manchin’s broken promise on judicial nominations
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin presents himself as a man who keeps his word. We will soon find out whether that is true. For now, there is cause for doubt.
As Associate Counsel to the President in the Trump White House, my job was to help select judicial nominees who were committed constitutionalists. During that period, Manchin had a reputation as a pragmatist who would break party lines and vote to confirm solid judges who would uphold the Constitution. Earlier this year, Manchin’s pragmatism returned. After voting for nearly all of Biden’s judicial nominees, Manchin expressed frustration with their highly partisan backgrounds and vowed to ensure the Democrat-controlled Senate didn’t become a rubber stamp. So Manchin drew a sensible line in the sand and promised not to vote for any judicial nominee lacking bipartisan support.
Sadly, Manchin’s promise began to falter in September when he voted to confirm Kevin Ritz to be a judge on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Ritz received zero Republican votes due to allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. To make matters worse, even liberal Senator Kyrsten Sinema voted against Ritz. When the going got tough, Manchin broke his promise and provided the final vote to confirm Ritz to a prestigious judgeship important to the Biden-Harris judicial legacy and saving Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer’s day.
After Manchin was criticized for his flip-flop, he backtracked and stated that his vote for Ritz was “a one-off type thing.” He will have a chance to prove that his promise to vote only for judicial nominees with bipartisan support remains intact when the Senate reconvenes this week. The timing couldn’t be more important. Some of Biden’s most radical judicial nominees will be considered soon as Schumer rushes to confirm a slew of judges in this lame-duck period before President Trump is sworn-in. Nominees up for a vote may include Adeel Mangi, who served on the board of an organization associated with terrorists and another that praised cop-killers; Embry Kidd, who failed to disclose to the U.S. Senate at least two child sex-related cases that saw his lenient rulings reversed and released from custody an illegal alien convicted of domestic abuse who was previously deported; and Karla M. Campbell, who served on the Legal Advisory Board of the fanatical leftist group “Workers’ Dignity” which has called for a “revolution that can push out the . . . capitalist class” and abolishing the military, prisons, ICE, and the police. These Biden nominees are disastrous for the Constitution, and we can only hope Manchin has the courage to keep his promise and refuses to vote for Mangi, Kidd, and Campbell since they failed to gain bipartisan support.
I don’t know what Joe Manchin’s political future holds after he retires from the Senate, but if he breaks his word again, West Virginians would be better off leaving him in Washington.
Robert Luther III serves as Distinguished Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and previously served as Associate Counsel to the President of the United States under President Trump.
