WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump returned to Washington on Sunday after a weekend weighing the strengths and weaknesses of four leading candidates for the Supreme Court, according to White House officials and advisers involved in the discussions.
Before he left his New Jersey golf club, the president said he was still deliberating as today's self-imposed deadline for an announcement neared. Trump said he would announce his decision on a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy at 8 p.m. today.
"I'm very close to making a final decision. And I believe this person will do a great job," Trump said. Asked by reporters how many people were being considered, the president said: "Let's say it's the four people ... they're excellent, every one. You can't go wrong."
He tweeted later Sunday that he was looking forward to the announcement and said an "exceptional person will be chosen!"
Three people familiar with the president's thinking said the four federal judges atop his shortlist are Brett Kavanaugh, Thomas Hardiman, Raymond Kethledge and Amy Coney Barrett.
Trump has sought to keep people guessing in the final hours, hoping to replicate his announcement of Justice Neil Gorsuch last year. The White House was working to keep the details under wraps until he rolls out his pick from the East Room.
The deliberations are coming against a background of a tight deadline to guide the nominee through Senate confirmation in time for the new justice to be seated when the Supreme Court returns in October, a goal of Trump and Republican leaders.
Vice President Mike Pence was at the Bedminster golf club for dinner and Supreme Court discussions on Friday, then returned to Washington on Friday night. Chief of Staff John Kelly was with Trump for most of the three-day weekend before flying to Washington on Sunday morning to prepare for the president's upcoming trip to Europe.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who will lead the confirmation fight on Capitol Hill, spoke with Trump by phone on Friday, according to two Republican officials briefed on the exchange. The officials underscored that McConnell did not push any choice on the president, though they said he noted that Hardiman and Kethledge could fare well in the Senate because their reputations and records were not as politically charged as others on the president's shortlist.
A McConnell spokesman declined to comment.
SENATE CONFIRMATION
Republican Sens. Roy Blunt of Missouri and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Sunday that they believe any of the top four contenders could get confirmed by the GOP-majority Senate.
"They're good judges," Blunt said on NBC's Meet the Press. "I think they'd be fine justices of the Supreme Court. I do think the president has to think about who is the easiest to get confirmed here. And I expect we will do that on sort of a normal timetable, a couple of months."
Graham, saying he had "never seen it this dysfunctional" in Congress, argued that Republicans still had every reason to be optimistic about the four suggested nominees.
"Republicans are holding four lottery tickets, and all of them are winners," he said. "If you are a conservative Republican, the four people named -- particularly Thomas Hardiman, I'm glad he's on the list -- are all winners, and every Republican should embrace these picks."
Leonard Leo, a Federalist Society leader who is one of the president's key outside advisers on judges, used an interview on Fox News Sunday to accuse opponents of any nominee of diversion. Democratic groups have said that warning voters of a looming threat to Roe v. Wade, the landmark case establishing a legal right to abortion, is one of their strongest messages.
"We only have a single individual on the court who has expressly said he would overturn Roe," Leo said, referring to Justice Clarence Thomas, the only one on the current bench to have voted against the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision reaffirming Roe. "So I think it's a bit of a scare tactic and rank speculation more than anything else."
Blunt said on NBC that "these judges, whichever one's nominated, should follow the Ginsburg strategy, which has been: no hints, no foretelling of how they're going to determine" controversial cases.
That was a reference to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said during her 1993 hearing that while women had a "right to decide whether or not to bear a child," it would be "wrong for me to say or preview in this legislative chamber how I would cast my vote." Conservatives have seized on that answer and called it "the Ginsburg rule," though Blunt on Sunday called it "the Notorious R.B.G. standard," a play on the name of the late rapper Notorious B.I.G.
Leo said Trump was aware that his commitment to conservative judges was significant to his victory in 2016.
"What drives the president in this process is that he made the Supreme Court a huge issue in the election, more than any other presidential candidate," Leo said. "He greatly enthused voters over it, and it was one of the big factors that led to his election and holding the U.S. Senate. And so he kept that momentum going with Neil Gorsuch, and now he's got another opportunity to do it again."
During the 2016 campaign, and in subsequent interviews, Trump assured conservative voters that his nominees would scrap the 45-year-old decision that legalized abortion across the country. In 2016, he told Fox News' Chris Wallace that Roe would be overturned if he got to appoint "two or three" justices, "because I am putting pro-life justices on the court."
"He is certainly the first major-party nominee who went on to be president to put a litmus test on Supreme Court justices, and that was to actually overturn Roe v. Wade," Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said on Fox News. "We believe him. He's got a vice president who committed to, you know, throw Roe on an ash heap of history. So we think that's the mind-set that many Americans are actually going into this with because it was such a vocal talking point for him."
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, said on ABC's This Week that most Americans support the court's decisions on Roe v. Wade, as well as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and gay marriage.
"They want protections for millions of Americans against pre-existing conditions to be sustained,"he said. "They want these voting rights and gay rights and other rights to be not only preserved, but also enhanced."
HARDIMAN'S BACKING
Hardiman, a runner-up when Trump chose Gorsuch as his high court nominee last year, received a wave of new attention in the weekend discussions, according to two people briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak publicly about it.
Hardiman was recommended by the president's sister, retired federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry. She served with the Pennsylvania-based Hardiman on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.
And his working-class roots -- he was the first in his family to graduate from college, and he drove a taxi to help pay the bills as a law student at Georgetown University -- have been cited as an attribute inside the White House, along with his conservative rulings.
"He's got a story that's compelling beyond the taxicab," former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., a friend of Hardiman's, said in an interview. "I'm talking to people about his service work with his church in West Virginia and about how he has helped people seeking asylum from communist countries. He speaks Spanish. His wife comes from a Democratic family, and he knows how to engage with all kind of people, not just Republicans."
Santorum added that picking Hardiman could help Trump bolster his support in Pennsylvania, a crucial state in his electoral college victory in 2016 and a 2020 battleground.
Hardiman turns 53 on Sunday, and Trump has said he wants to appoint a justice who could serve for decades.
Trump has also said positive things to associates about Barrett, a staunch social conservative who has written skeptically about Roe v. Wade. Advisers have told him that he could choose her later as a replacement for Ginsburg, should the 85-year-old leave the court.
Kavanaugh has been viewed as the front-runner, but he has close ties to the Bush family, who have been critical of the president. He would also face questioning about his service under Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton.
People close to the process warn that Kethledge is the dark-horse candidate, considered likable but comparatively dull and not sufficiently conservative on issues like immigration.
Leo said Sunday that such discussions are standard, noting that "every potential nominee before announcement gets concerns expressed about them by people who might ultimately support them."
"Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Barrett have a lot of name recognition among supporters of the president, and I think that ultimately when people like them are nominated, you'll see a lot of folks line up," Leo said.
Of the other two, he added: "Ray Kethledge and Tom Hardiman, they're a little bit less known by conservatives. And their records are a little bit lighter. So, it might take some time."
Information for this article was contributed by Robert Costa, David Weigel and Robert Barnes of The Washington Post; by Maggie Haberman, Michael S. Schmidt and Adam Liptak of The New York Times; by Jennifer Jacobs, Laura Litvan, Greg Stohr and Ben Brody of Bloomberg News; and by Catherine Lucey of The Associated Press.
A Section on 07/09/2018