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White House Counsel Don McGahn will be Trump's lead adviser on
the pick, having successfully guided the nomination of Justice
Neil Gorsuch through the selection and confirmation process last
year, White House sources said.
Leonard Leo, an outside legal activist, will be another key
member of the president's advisory team, sources said.
Leo is on leave from his position as executive vice president of
the Federalist Society, an influential conservative legal group
that regularly gathers like-minded lawyers and judges at
conferences and on law school campuses nationwide. He helped
compile a 25-person list of likely nominees from which Trump has
said he will make his selection.
Also central to the vetting and interviewing process will be two
associate counsels to the president: Rob Luther and David
Morrell, said former Justice Department lawyer John Malcolm, now
an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank
in Washington.
"They’re smart and tapped into the conservative legal
community," he said. "They’re very skilled at what they do."
Like-minded advocacy groups are expected to mount efforts to
assure the nominee is confirmed, and the Judicial Crisis Network
has said it will spend at least a million dollars in the effort.
The group's campaign will urge voters to pressure their senators
to ensure confirmation. The group has already produced a new TV
advertisement calling Trump's list of 25 potential candidates
the "best of the best" and warning that his opponents will lie
and attack the nominee.
Trump met on Thursday with a group of six senators - three
Republicans and three Democrats - to discuss the court vacancy,
the White House said in a statement.
The Democrats - Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of
Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota - are running for
re-election in November in states Trump won in 2016. Two of the
Republicans - Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins - are
abortion-rights supporters and could balk at voting for a Trump
nominee who would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade landmark
abortion decision.
The other senator who met with Trump, Republican Charles
Grassley, is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which will
consider any Trump choice.
People familiar with the selection process said the front-
runners on Trump’s list at this point are all current federal
appeals court judges: Brett Kavanaugh, a judge on the District
of Columbia U.S. Court of Appeals; Thomas Hardiman, who serves
on the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals;
Raymond Kethledge of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; Amul
Thapar, whom Trump named to the 6th Circuit; and Amy Coney
Barrett, whom Trump named to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals.
All five have spoken at Federalist Society events.
Two sources close to the process said Trump has also expressed
interest in Utah Senator Mike Lee, who has the support of Texas
Senator Ted Cruz. Both senators are Republicans.
The complication for a Lee nomination is that if he joined the
court, a Republican Senate seat would be vacated at a time when
Republicans hold only a narrow 51-49 Senate majority.
Trump could be reluctant to take Lee out of the Senate because
of past experience. When he tapped Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions
to be attorney general, Sessions' replacement in the Senate
ended up being a Democrat, despite Alabama's traditional
conservatism.
Trump “likes Mike, and Mike would do it. But the problem you
face is, you have to make sure you have the Senate,” one source
said.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung and Steve Holland; Additional
reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Sue
Horton and Peter Cooney)
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