From Washington Times.com (Feb. 18, 2022):
President Biden’s imminent announcement of his first Supreme Court nominee will cap off a White House decision-making process that has been supported — and pressured — by a secretive network of liberal “dark money” advocacy groups and anonymous donors who seek appointments of far-left judges.
Demand Justice, the liberal group that pressed Mr. Biden to add seats to the Supreme Court in a failed bid to change its ideological balance, is a well-funded powerhouse in Washington, advocating for judicial nominees whom conservatives view as extremists.
Dark money in campaign finance parlance refers to political spending by nonprofits, unions and trade associations that are not legally required to disclose their individual donors.
Demand Justice is tied to the shadowy Sixteen Thirty Fund, the leader in Democratic dark money that spent about $410 million in 2020 to defeat President Trump and help Democrats win control of the Senate. Its donors include billionaires George Soros and French-born eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. One anonymous donor alone contributed more than $51.7 million in 2018, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Conservatives are targeting a liberal consulting firm, Arabella Advisors, as the billion-dollar force behind the Democratic dark money network, which overtook the Republican Party in the amount of undisclosed political spending in 2020.
The conservative Judicial Crisis Network is airing a $2.5 million ad campaign about Mr. Biden’s upcoming nomination. It says the Supreme Court’s legacy of political independence “is being tarnished by secret money from liberals.”
“The president and the Senate were bankrolled by Arabella Advisors network,” the ad states. “A record amount of dark money, over $1 billion, put them in office. So they’ll put up an Arabella judge, a liberal activist, a Biden rubber-stamp. A huge sum, a huge payback.”
Critics say Demand Justice essentially has a seat at the table as Mr. Biden weighs his choices for the high court. Paige Herwig, the president’s point person on judicial nominations, worked for the group, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki was a consultant for Demand Justice before the 2020 election.
“Demand Justice, which began as a project of the dark money behemoth Sixteen Thirty Fund, has already shown its power by bullying Justice [Stephen G.] Breyer into retirement,” said Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of the conservative-leaning Americans for Public Trust. “Now, with nearly unlimited resources at their disposal and insiders in the White House leading the selection process, they have a seat at the table to push their hand-picked candidates that they deem sufficiently radical.”
Neither the White House nor Demand Justice responded to questions about the group’s influence in the president’s decision-making on judges. Justice Breyer announced plans to retire last month, and Mr. Biden said he would honor a campaign pledge to appoint the first Black woman in history to the high court.
Among Mr. Biden’s top three candidates is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Demand Justice said she has “stood up for the rule of law by holding the Trump administration accountable for its rule-breaking.” The Senate has confirmed her on a bipartisan basis twice for federal judgeships.
Demand Justice is led by Brian Fallon, an aide to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Responding to a recent comment by Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois that Senate Democrats’ goal is to “get bipartisan support for the nominee,” Mr. Fallon said in a post on Twitter, “No, our goal is to nominate a highly qualified Black woman and confirm her, whether Republicans join or not.”
Mr. Fallon has defended the group’s failed effort to expand the Supreme Court. He said Mr. Biden’s nominee won’t change the balance of power on the high court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority. The president’s nomination will replace Justice Breyer, 83, with another liberal jurist, albeit one much younger.
“This nominee, however strong she is, will not have the capacity to ‘reset’ this Court,” Mr. Fallon tweeted. “Only Court expansion can do that.”
Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, said Americans should be concerned about the influence of these liberal groups on the president.
“What’s so concerning is that these kinds of extreme ideas, which are so far out of step with where the American people are, are being given imprimatur by the Biden administration,” she said. “The person [in the White House] who has the closest connection with helping to choose judicial nominations is actually a former Demand Justice member, so they have embraced this judicial extremism. I think it has everything to do with what the dark money funders want to see.”
Mr. Trump waged an effective four-year campaign to appoint conservative judges with the help of Leonard Leo, a longtime leader of the Federalist Society, and backing from the Judicial Crisis Network.
His appointments included three Supreme Court Justices — Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — who swung the balance on the court firmly in favor of the right.
Ms. Severino said she expects the president to nominate a far-left judge and then try to convince the public that the candidate is mainstream.
“Whoever it is, it’s always going to be someone who they pitch to us as a nice, down-the-middle moderate,” she said. “But what Biden has said about what he’s looking for is very different.” [source]
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