Adeel Mangi, nominated to the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the Third Circuit, has conceded in a letter to President Biden that he has “no path ahead” in mild of a deal permitting the subsequent administration to fill appellate court docket seats. However Mangi mentioned within the letter that the system for approving federal court docket judges is “basically damaged” and has was “a channel for the elevating of cash primarily based on performative McCarthyism earlier than video cameras.”
Mangi’s letter, obtained by Regulation.com, doesn’t withdraw his nomination, which is predicted to lapse on the finish of the yr. The letter follows a reported cope with the GOP that permits the affirmation of extra district court docket judges. The deal, made public Nov. 21, sinks the nominations of Mangi and three different nominees for federal appeals courts—Ryan Park for the Fourth Circuit, who withdrew final week, and Julia Lipez for the First Circuit and Karla Campbell for the Sixth Circuit, whose nominations are nonetheless pending.
Mangi, who was born in Pakistan, stood to change into the primary Muslim decide on a federal appeals court docket. However his nomination has drawn heavy criticism from some senators in mild of his position on the Advisory Board of Rutgers College’s Middle for Safety, Race and Rights Advisory Board, a put up he held from 2019 to 2023. Some critics known as the group anti-Semitic and pro-terrorist. Mangi was additionally criticized for his affiliation with the Authorized Support Society, which allegedly has advocated defunding the New York Metropolis police.
In his letter to President Biden, Mangi mentioned the premise of senators who criticized his nomination “gave the impression to be that as a result of I’m Muslim, absolutely I assist terrorism and rejoice Sep 11. After I made clear that every one these claims are false—that I condemn the Hamas assaults and all types of terrorism, and certainly that it was my metropolis that was attacked on Sep 11, Republican senators simply repeated their performative outrage.”
Mangi, a accomplice and litigator at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler in New York, has litigated numerous spiritual discrimination circumstances, together with the illustration of Muslim teams whose plans to assemble mosques had been turned down in Bayonne and Bernards Township, New Jersey. His letter known as the opposition to his nomination “an organized smear marketing campaign fueled by darkish cash,” citing a press release on the Senate flooring by U.S Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island.
“Our nation faces an incoming tsunami of bigotry, hatred, and discrimination. It targets Muslims, Arabs, Jews, Black folks, the LGBTQ+ group, and plenty of others. And it at all times pretends to be one thing aside from what it’s,” Mangi wrote.
Mangi’s letter says that “spurious on-line assaults had been launched regularly from throughout the extremist ecosystem” and that Senator Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, “took the extraordinary step of demanding info from my companions and my regulation agency; volleys had been launched towards even my personal sector purchasers.” Mangi added that Senator Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky led others in launching “common assaults on me on-line and on the Senate flooring as an antisemite radical.”
Mangi’s letter to Biden, citing the phrases of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, on the inauguration of a mosque in Washington in 1957, mentioned People should now take a look at the story of this nomination and ask themselves, “Is that this who we at the moment are?”
“For my youngsters, I hope America someday lives as much as President Eisenhower’s promise, even when not immediately. Personally, I entered this nomination course of as a proud American and a proud Muslim. I exit it the identical means, unbowed,” he mentioned.
