{"id":100930,"date":"2018-07-11T12:15:10","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T16:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=100930"},"modified":"2018-07-11T12:18:17","modified_gmt":"2018-07-11T16:18:17","slug":"are-sitting-supreme-court-justices-negotiating-the-terms-of-their-exit-with-the-potus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=100930","title":{"rendered":"Are retiring Supreme Court justices negotiating the terms of their exit with the POTUS?"},"content":{"rendered":"

SOTN<\/a> Editor’s Note:<\/p>\n

WE CERTAINLY HOPE NOT ! ! !<\/strong><\/em><\/h1>\n

State of the Nation<\/a>
\nJuly 11, 2018<\/p>\n

\n

Did Anthony Kennedy make a deal with Trump?<\/span><\/h1>\n

Matt Ford
\nThe New Republic<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

That\u2019s the question raised by reporting from NBC News on Tuesday morning. Reporters Geoff Bennett and Leigh Ann Caldwell tweeted that\u00a0the departing justice<\/a>\u00a0spent months negotiating with the Trump White House about his replacement, and that Kennedy only retired after he received assurances that it\u00a0would be Brett Kavanaugh<\/a>, a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals judge and a former Kennedy clerk.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

On Kavanaugh pick<\/p>\n

Kennedy and Trump\/WH had been in negotiations for months over Kennedy\u2019s replacement. Once Kennedy received assurances that it would be Kavanaugh, his former law clerk, Kennedy felt comfortable retiring, according to a source who was told of the discussions.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Leigh Ann Caldwell (@LACaldwellDC)\u00a0July 10, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

\n
\n

Source familiar tells NBC that Justice Kennedy had been in negotiations with the Trump team for months over Kennedy\u2019s replacement. Once Kennedy received assurances that it would be Kavanaugh (his former law clerk) Kennedy felt comfortable retiring –\u00a0@LACaldwellDC<\/a>\u00a0&\u00a0@frankthorp<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett)\u00a0July 10, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

Politico<\/i>\u00a0offered a\u00a0slightly different account<\/a>\u00a0of the Kavanaugh selection process, reporting on Monday night that Kennedy,\u00a0in a conversation with Trump about his imminent retirement, merely suggested his former clerk as a successor. That recommendation then carried great weight with a president eager to leave his mark on the nation\u2019s judiciary.<\/p>\n

Administration officials said Trump was taken with Kavanaugh even before his conversation with Kennedy. But Kennedy, in leaving the impression with Trump that Kavanaugh would be a great candidate for the job, helped the president make up his mind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s nothing unusual about a Supreme Court justice timing his or her retirement to ensure an ideologically similar replacement. But what NBC\u2019s report describes is quite different. Any bargaining between a sitting justice and the White House would immediately raise ethical questions about his or her participation in cases involving the president. Kennedy voted to uphold Trump\u2019s controversial travel ban the day before he announced his retirement, for example.<\/p>\n

That said, it\u2019s possible that what happened still fell short of an overt quid pro quo between Kennedy and Trump. The president and other conservatives made little secret of their desire to replace the court\u2019s swing justice after the 2016 election. Trump\u2019s selection last year of Neil Gorsuch, another former Kennedy clerk, to replace Antonin Scalia was\u00a0widely considered<\/a>\u00a0to be a not-so-subtle nod at the 81-year-old jurist that Trump would nominate a similar successor to him. Kennedy may have simply taken the hint and offered a suggestion of his own on the way out.<\/p>\n

___
\nhttp:\/\/newrepublic.com\/minutes\/149750\/anthony-kennedy-make-deal-trump<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}