Senate Republicans, White House back Trump court nominee despite conservative backlash

By Nate Raymond

Sept 17 (Reuters) - Senate Republicans and the White House on Wednesday voiced their continued support for President Donald Trump's latest nominee to serve as a federal appeals court judge even as a number of advocacy groups on the right came out in opposition claiming she was not conservative enough to join the bench.

Rebecca Taibleson stressed her "conservative values" as she sought to assure members of the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee that she would be a judge in the mold of the U.S. Supreme Court justices she had once clerked for if she is confirmed to a seat on the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Taibleson, currently a Wisconsin federal prosecutor, clerked for Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, at the Supreme Court and for Brett Kavanaugh, while he was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She later testified in support of his confirmation to the Supreme Court after Trump nominated him in 2018.

Despite those credentials, her nomination sparked opposition from leaders of dozens of conservative groups including First Liberty Institute, the Family Research Council and Gun Owners of America, who in a joint statement on Monday alleged her confirmation would "damage the legacy of President Trump."

They pointed to what they said were donations she and her husband had made to Democrats and progressives, including in support of former U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, the only Democrat to vote for Kavanaugh, and a local Jewish organization the conservatives said supported LGBTQ individuals.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said their concerns "boil down to that you're secretly a closeted liberal and that you'd be an activist on the bench."

But Cruz said he had also heard from "multiple conservatives who I respect deeply and know you well and have vouched for you energetically." He said she has had a "very impressive legal career" and gave her a chance to respond to her critics.

While Democrats appeared opposed to Taibleson's legal philosophy, Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois, the panel's top Democrat, took issue with the conservative activists' invocation of her congregation and support of the Jewish group, saying it "may be a new low point."

Taibleson said her opponents' concerns appeared due in large part to the views of her husband, Benjamin Taibleson, a fellow prosecutor who has donated to Democrats and was among five finalists to become the U.S. attorney in Milwaukee under Democratic President Joe Biden.

"It is true that my husband and I don't agree about everything in politics and in the law, bu my husband and I do agree it turns out about more important things in our day-to-day life," Taibleson told the senators.

She said she was "raised in actually the best tradition of Charlie Kirk," the conservative activist who was assassinated last week. She said just as Kirk relished debate, she and her husband debate policy and law too.

Asked if Trump continues to support Taibleson, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson in a statement said the president "only selects the most qualified and talented judicial nominees who will uphold our Constitution and the rule of law, which is why he nominated Rebecca Taibleson to the Seventh Circuit."

Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the panel's top Republican, also backed her, citing Taibleson's decision to testify publicly in support of Kavanaugh in 2018. He said she was "an important counterpoint to the embarrassing partisan spectacle that committee Democrats orchestrated."

The Republican-led Senate confirmed Kavanaugh 50-48 after a grueling confirmation battle in which he faced allegations that became public that he sexually assaulted a woman while in high school. Kavanaugh denied the allegations.

"I know that he is a good man," Taibleson said on Wednesday. "Those allegations were so fantastical to me."