Adeel Mangi’s nomination to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals has most likely come to an end, amid what his supporters decry as overt and unrelenting anti-Muslim attacks against him.
“This great body failed your father,” U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said in a speech on the Senate floor addressed to Mangi’s two teenaged sons, earlier this week.
“It failed the American people. It is one of the most painful chapters I’ve had in public life,” Booker said in remarks reported by New Jersey Globe. “The American people deserve a government that … upholds the ideals that are so core to this country: that everyone is created equal, that there should be liberty and justice for all. That’s not what happened in this episode. It’s not what happened to your dad. He was treated differently because of his faith.”
“It was shameful for us as senators,” he said. “It was shameful for America.”
Mangi, who is Pakistani American and lives in New Jersey, would have been the first-ever Muslim to serve as a federal appellate judge.
As Mangi’s nomination faced opposition earlier this year, the White House joined civil rights groups in condemning anti-Muslim attacks against him.
“Mr. Mangi has been subjected to uniquely hostile attacks, in a way other nominees have not — precisely because of his Muslim faith,” White House said in a statement to NBC News in February.
His nomination has been in limbo all year. Since the Biden Administration has chosen not to withdraw Mangi in favor of an alternate, it follows that the seat to which he was nominated would instead be filled by incoming President Trump.
Mangi wrote to President Biden this week to thank him for the nomination and to outline the attacks that derailed it. The attacks included tens of thousands of dollars in online ads that tried to link him to terrorism.
“Who will give up the rewards of private sector success for public service, if the added price is character assassination and wading though a Senatorial swamp like this one?” Mangi’s letter reads. ”This process 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. I set forth this record of my experience and my opinions so that this playbook will be recognized the next time a Muslim is nominated to a prominent position of service.”
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