A liberal lobby group that led a campaign to bully Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer to quit while pushing federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as his replacement has close ties to the Biden White House despite claims of ignorance by top Democrats.
As key Senate Democrats this week claimed they knew little about the group, Demand Justice, opposition research teams helped to reveal that both White House press secretary Jen Psaki and the president’s judicial selection czar worked with the outfit, headed by a former aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“I honestly don’t know that much about them,” Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, a member of the Judiciary Committee, told Politico. Other Democratic senators have also feigned ignorance.
Hilarious – @CoryBooker on Demand Justice: “I honestly don’t know that much about them.”
Cory Booker in real life ⬇️ https://t.co/Hl0T9NY8w1 pic.twitter.com/VAKNlkm84w
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) March 22, 2022
But the group that has pushed court-packing schemes and court “rebalancing” is well known in Democratic circles and, according to reports, fashions itself as the liberal alternative to GOP court advocates critical of Jackson and who was behind Republican nominees.
Its influence inside the White House is deep and is the reason why critics are eager to find out why it so strongly campaigned to have Biden replace Breyer with Jackson.
It has played a central role in rallying support for Jackson and made it clear only Jackson would satisfy the progressive coalition it led, in part due to her background as a public defender. Demand Justice even cut ads to help with the nomination, leading some critics to call it a puppet master of the federal appeals judge.
Psaki was a “senior adviser” who attached her name to Demand Justice press releases, like one in 2020 that ripped former President Donald Trump and Republicans for attempting to scale back Obamacare. In that release, she also criticized Biden’s team for not making a bigger deal of the Supreme Court during the election.
Then there is Biden’s court czar, Paige Herwig, who also worked for Demand Justice.
In a Demand Justice press release, she was praised when Biden picked her to work in the White House legal office. That release quoted a former Obama-Biden White House aide who moved on to be the chief counsel of Demand Justice.
It said, “Demand Justice Chief Counsel Christopher Kang, who served as Deputy White House Counsel during the Obama-Biden administration, issued the following statement: ‘President-elect Biden is off to a phenomenal start when it comes to judicial nominations. Paige Herwig is a brilliant lawyer and committed public servant who knows the judicial nomination process inside and out, and she’s been on the front lines of rethinking how Democrats should fight for our courts. No one is better positioned to carry forward President-elect Biden’s commitment to rebalancing our judicial system.”
The group has been tied to the so-called liberal dark money “mothership” Arabella Advisors. It recently issued a statement saying it does not order groups around.
Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice, who worked for the Obama-Biden Justice Department and as Clinton’s 2016 press secretary, told Politico that questions about it are a “badge of honor.”
On the GOP side, for perspective, several Supreme Court advocacy groups have had influential ties to Republican administrations.
