Former President Donald Trump is working on a new list of 20 potential picks for the Supreme Court should he be reelected in November, The Washington Times has learned.
The move revives a strategy he used to help win over conservatives in the 2016 election, which led to his reshaping the high court and the federal judiciary more broadly.
Mr. Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, also suggested President Biden release his own list, giving voters a chance to compare.
“I’m going to be putting together a list of judges — great judges — a list of about 20. I think it’s important to reveal who your Supreme Court justices will be,” Mr. Trump told The Times on Tuesday. “There are people who say the list helped me win the election last time.
“Frankly, I think Biden should be doing the same thing,” he said.
The former president said he won’t rush the list, but will make it public before the election. He declined to say with whom he was consulting to formulate the roster.
In 2016 he worked closely with Leonard Leo, longtime vice president of the Federalist Society, a right-of-center group on legal and judiciary issues.
Mr. Leo had previously helped President George W. Bush win confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
In 2016, Mr. Leo helped craft the first list of Supreme Court picks Mr. Trump announced that May, then helped revamp the list in September, just ahead of the election.
The issue had heightened significance in February 2016 because of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death.
Then-President Obama moved to fill the seat but Senate Republicans, led by then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, refused to give his nominee a hearing, saying the seat should be decided by voters and their choice of president.
Mr. Trump’s list of nominees helped assuage conservative apprehension about voting for someone who had no track record in office and who had in his past been an abortion-rights supporter.
Exit polling in 2016 showed 21% of voters rated the Supreme Court as the most important factor in their voting decision, and 56% of them backed Mr. Trump. And the Washington Post calculated that 26% of Trump voters said the Supreme Court was the core of their decision.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wasn’t on Mr. Trump’s first list in May 2016 but he was on the September list.
He would go on to be confirmed on a 55-45 vote in the Senate.
After the Gorsuch confirmation, Mr. Trump publicly released additional names for his Supreme Court shortlist in late 2017. Among them was then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, who in 2018 would become Mr. Trump’s second pick. He was confirmed on a 50-48 vote, taking the seat of retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Mr. Trump released yet another list in September 2020, amid the campaign. Just days later Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and Mr. Trump named Judge Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee. She was confirmed on a 52-48 vote just days before the election.
There is no immediate vacancy on the court this year, but rulings such as the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the issue of abortion to the states, and the Bruen decision that deepened Second Amendment protections, have heightened the focus on the high court in this year’s election.
Other conservative legal voices have been floated as aiding the former president with his new list this year, such as Article III Project President Mike Davis.
Mr. Davis clerked for Justice Gorsuch and worked on his confirmation to the high court in 2017, as well as the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh while working under Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican and then-chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“President Trump’s most consequential accomplishment of his first term was the transformation of the 5 to 4 left-of-center court to the 5-to-4 Clarence Thomas court, and President Trump will build on that success in his second term with even more courageous appointees to the Supreme Court,” Mr. Davis said.
• Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.
• Charles Hurt can be reached at churt@washingtontimes.com.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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