REFILE-Justice Department curtails ABA role in vetting Trump's judicial nominees

By Nate Raymond

May 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday limited the American Bar Association's decades-old role in rating candidates for life-tenured positions in the federal judiciary, curtailing its ability to vet new nominations by Republican President Donald Trump.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in a letter to ABA President William Bray said that for decades the nation's largest voluntary association of lawyers had enjoyed special access to judicial nominees.

"Unfortunately, the ABA no longer functions as a fair arbiter of nominees’ qualifications, and its ratings invariably and demonstrably favor nominees put forth by Democratic administrations," Bondi wrote.

She said that while the ABA was free like other organizations to comment on judicial nominations, Trump's nominees will not respond to its questionnaires and the Justice Department will no longer direct them to provide the group waivers allowing them access to their bar records.

The ABA did not respond to a request for comment.

The announcement came a day after Trump announced six new judicial nominees including Emil Bove, a Justice Department official who previously served as his criminal defense lawyer in the New York trial in which the president was convicted of criminal charges over hush money paid to a porn star.

Trump announced that he was nominating Bove, the principal associate deputy attorney general, to serve as a life-tenured judge on the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a move decried by Democrats.

Starting in 1953 during Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower's tenure, the nonpartisan legal organization had vetted judicial nominees before they were sent to the U.S. Senate, which must vote to confirm them.

The practice continued until 2001, when Republican President George W. Bush ended the tradition of giving the ABA a first look at nominees.

While Democratic President Barack Obama revived the practice, Trump ended it again in 2017 in his first term, and Biden did not revive the practice.

Bondi's letter went a step further by curtailing the organization's ability to vet nominees after they were named.

Conservatives have long accused the ABA of bias against Republican judicial nominees. During Trump's first term in office, it rated 10 of judicial nominees as "not qualified."

Those included U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, a trial judge in Florida who is married to Chad Mizelle, Bondi's chief of staff. In a post on X, Chad Mizelle said the ABA "weighs nominees on politics, not qualifications."

"The ABA even ruled that Clarence Thomas – one of the greatest jurists of our time – was 'not qualified' to serve as a judge," he wrote. "That’s just one example."

The first of Trump's 11 announced judicial nominees of his second term are slated to appear before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on June 4. Trump in his first term secured confirmation of 234 judicial nominees, including three members of the U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority.

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