Sheldon Whitehouse: “for the first time in American history, a gentleman of Muslim faith has been nominated to serve on a Federal Circuit…”

“for the first time in American history, a gentleman of Muslim faith has been nominated to serve on a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. What could and should have been a moment of pride has been stained by the nominee, Adeel Mangi, having been subjected to a series--a campaign--of baseless and gross attacks. Senator Booker of New Jersey came to the floor yesterday and gave an eloquent and thorough rebuttal of those attacks, so I won't rehash that. But it is important that my colleagues understand where these attacks came from. It is not just that they were untrue; it is that the whole campaign is a fake. These attacks are part of a coordinated campaign by the same dark money interests that helped Donald Trump pack our Federal courts and who now want to stop President Biden from confirming qualified nominees who weren't handpicked by those billionaire special interests. You don't have to search long to see their fingerprints all over this smear campaign. We can start with the main culprit, the Judicial Crisis Network. Let me give you just an overview of what the Judicial Crisis Network is. The billionaire operation to pack the courts had an operative who was the staff person, essentially, who directed it. His name was Leonard Leo. Leonard Leo runs a whole array of front groups to obscure what is really going on, sort of like a pea and shell game, only with lots of shells. This is a diagram that I use about one component of his front group armada.…”