New Jersey litigator Adeel Mangi decried the “organized smear campaign” that he said derailed his path to the federal bench in a letter to the White House on Monday, calling the system for choosing judges “fundamentally broken.”
Nominated by President Joe Biden to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, Mangi would have been the first Muslim American to serve on a federal appeals court. In his letter to Biden, he hit back against attacks on his character, in his first public comments since his nomination was scuttled last month.
Mangi, who is of Pakistani descent, wrote that he was prepared to answer questions about his qualifications and legal issues during the confirmation process. Instead, he was asked about Israel, whether he supported Hamas and if he had celebrated 9/11.
“The underlying premise appeared to be that because I am Muslim, surely I support terrorism and celebrate 9/11,” Mangi said. “There were children in the audience.”
Mangi said he had viewed America as “a country where I could succeed based on my professional skill, hard work and character — regardless of my faith or background.”
Instead, Mangi, who was educated at Harvard and Oxford universities, said he found himself targeted by an “organized smear campaign fueled by dark money.”
“Our Constitution forbids religious tests for any Office of the United States and American Muslims will cherish that fundamental value, even if others apply it only selectively,” he wrote.
Mangi’s bid to serve on the court effectively ended last month when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer reached a deal with Republicans that dropped Mangi and three other nominees for appellate courts. In exchange, Republicans agreed to approve a group of nominees for federal trial courts.
Ties to Rutgers center
Despite his repeatedly condemning terrorism, GOP lawmakers continued their attacks, encouraged by far-right groups that attempted to paint him as an antisemite and launched television ads that interspersed images of Hamas flags and footage of the twin towers burning.
His critics lobbed accusations against him based on his ties to an academic center at Rutgers Law School, citing anti-Israel politics of people who had spoken at events that the center had sponsored, accusing them of antisemitism. In his role on the advisory board, Mangi said, he attended four meetings over four years focused on academic research supporting civil rights legislation. He had no role in events, he said.
“Senators sought to attribute to me the views of individuals that I do not know at university speaker events that I never even heard of,” he wrote. “Muslims in America recognize well these sort of guilt-by-association attacks.”
During the hearings, Mangi added, he was never criticized for a statement that he himself had uttered or written. Mangi received support from dozens of bar association and over 125 civil rights groups, including Jewish organizations.
With his nomination on the line, lawmakers raised another line of attack, claiming he had sympathy for “those who support cop killers” because of his association with the Alliance of Families for Justice, which supports families affected by mass incarceration and has advocated for the release of aging prisoners, including people convicted of killing police officers.
He and his colleagues were asked to serve on an advisory panel after winning a record settlement on behalf of a mentally ill black inmate who was beaten to death in handcuffs, Mangi explained. They were asked to provide legal advice on future similar cases, but the panel did not meet or have responsibilities, and no cases were brought, he added. Allegations against him, he said, were “based on outright lies.”
‘McCarthyism’
The campaign against him, Mangi wrote, was intended to “make it intolerable for Muslims proud of their identity to serve this nation” and “will fail.”
“This is no longer a system for evaluating fitness for judicial office,” Mangi wrote. “It is now a channel for the raising of money based on performative McCarthyism before video cameras, and for the dissemination of dark-money-funded attacks that especially target minorities.”
The process, he wrote, “must be reinvented to protect nominees from threats both reputational and physical in an era of Congressional dishonor where disinformation reigns and all decency has been abandoned.”
For Muslim Americans, Mangi’s treatment was a troubling reminder of persistent discrimination that poses hurdles to their advancement.
The National Association of Muslim Lawyers wrote that “aspersions cast by members of the Senate — unfounded in Mr. Mangi’s well-vetted and honorable career — can be ascribed only to the most vile anti-Muslim hatred.”
Selaedin Maksut, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the scuttling of Mangi’s nomination was a “deep disappointment.”
“His nomination was an opportunity to increase diversity on the federal bench,” Maksut said in a statement, “and yet his credentials were overshadowed by partisan and discriminatory attacks aimed at his religion and personal views. This is not only a setback for Mangi but for the principle of fairness in the judicial confirmation process.”
