Need help navigating the Republican primaries? Get text updates from Karen Tumulty.ArrowRight
Yet few have been so abused by the Senate’s broken judicial confirmation process as Edelman.
President Barack Obama nominated him in 2016 to fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. But this was during then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s blockade of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, and Edelman, caught up like other nominees in the Republicans’ refusal to move Obama’s judicial picks, never got a vote, or even a hearing.
Advertisement
President Biden nominated Edelman to the same court in 2022. Republicans struck again, this time with an ugly, Willie-Horton style smear campaign. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) fabricated an outrageous lie, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that a man Edelman released in a pretrial hearing “went on to murder — to murder — an 11-year-old.” In reality, the man in question hadn’t murdered anyone, but Blackburn badly distorted the facts of a case to suggest that Edelman was to blame for a child’s death.
Follow this authorDana Milbank's opinionsFollow
This time, Democrats controlled the Senate. They could have, and should have, called out Blackburn’s nonsense and confirmed Edelman. Instead, they cowered. They shied from defending Edelman, or even pointing out the facts; during the 15-month ordeal, not one Democratic senator said one public word in support. A few in the 51-member Democratic caucus — the always-cagey Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), along with Jacky Rosen (Nev.) — refused to commit their votes. The months dragged on, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) refused to schedule a vote before the Senate recessed for Christmas break. Two weeks ago, the White House pulled the plug rather than resubmit the nomination for the new session of Congress.
Edelman was an important pick for progressives. Only 6 percent of federal judges have been labor-union lawyers or otherwise came from the “economic justice” sphere, the progressive Alliance for Justice has found. The number of judges who were public defenders is not much higher. Edelman, in addition to his years defending those who couldn’t afford lawyers, served the Service Employees International Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the United Mine Workers, the United Steelworkers, the International Association of Firefighters and the AFL-CIO.
Advertisement
“Judges with experience in both economic justice and public defense are essentially nonexistent,” said Jake Faleschini, a legal director at the Alliance for Justice. “Judge Edelman was a unicorn nominee, and we would all be better off with him on the federal bench.” The group is “extremely disappointed that he didn’t receive a vote.” The right-wing Blackburn had ideological reasons to sabotage a judge who intimately understands the legal struggles of workers and the poor — and Democrats had every reason to champion him.
We live in a world in which MAGA types such as Blackburn use disinformation as a matter of course. That’s a given. But if Democrats are so cowardly that they won’t fight back and won’t answer the lies with truth, then the battle to preserve our democracy is already lost no matter who wins at the polls.
Blackburn rolled out her misrepresentation at Edelman’s confirmation hearing, in November 2022. She claimed that a few weeks after Edelman released the defendant, he participated “in the murder of an 11-year-old child.” She claimed that the defendant had previously shot “a gun in the street at 1 p.m. in broad daylight.” She claimed that a week before Edelman released him, “another judge had written an opinion denying his motion for release because he was a danger to the community.” She claimed that Edelman “knew that releasing him with a GPS ankle bracelet wouldn’t protect the community.”
Advertisement
Fox News dutifully amplified Blackburn’s claims with additional calumny from her in the headline: “A child is dead because Judge Edelman didn’t do his job, and now he wants a promotion.” It was at the Judiciary Committee’s meeting to vote on the nomination last February that she upgraded her accusation to the blatantly false claim that the released defendant murdered a child.
There’s a fair argument to be made that D.C. law, which requires a uniquely high standard be met for detention, leaves too many dangerous people on the streets, frustrating police and prosecutors. But Blackburn wasn’t making such a fair argument; she was engaging in a vile distortion.
Court records show that in the gun-possession case for which Edelman released the defendant, Christian Wingfield, to home detention, he had not been charged with a violent offense. Though he had been caught with a gun before, he had no violent offenses on his record. He had never been charged with firing a gun “in the street at 1 p.m.” as Blackburn alleged, or at any other time in any other place. The court’s Pretrial Services Agency, which has had only 1 percent of those under its supervision arrested for violent crimes, had approved Wingfield for electronic monitoring.
Advertisement
Also omitted from Blackburn’s smear: The pretrial hearing before Edelman was in May 2020, as the pandemic was exploding, and jurisdictions nationwide were struggling with covid-19 in their prison populations. Wingfield was at a heightened risk because of asthma and other conditions. And finally, the other judge who had declined to release the man a week earlier had apparently confused the case with another, because he based the ruling on “the government’s opposition,” when in fact the government had filed no such opposition.
As for the “murder,” three months after Wingfield’s release, he was with a group of men that fired guns near an anti-violence cookout on July 4, 2020, and a stray bullet killed 11-year-old Davon McNeal as he ran from a vehicle to an apartment. Though all four in the group were initially charged with murder, prosecutors later determined that Wingfield, though armed, did not fire a gun at all that night, much less the fatal shot. He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter because, by running down the street with the group involved in the shooting, he “knowingly associated” himself with the crime.
Retired federal appeals court judge Beverly Martin, now with New York University, wrote to senators to say this: “I don’t know any judge — whether nominated by a Democratic or Republican president — who would have detained [the defendant] under the law and circumstances that existed at the time.”
Advertisement
Democratic senators were aware of all this, and they could have pushed back against the smear. They could have pointed out that, of the hundreds of criminal trials and thousands of criminal hearings Edelman presided over, he had only been reversed on appeal twice. Instead, they shrank from the fight.
On the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) was at first concerned about Blackburn’s allegations, but he backed Edelman in the committee vote after learning the facts. Other senators were likewise reassured. Manchin and Sinema were their usual noncommittal selves, though they seldom tank a nomination when the rest of the Democratic caucus is on board. But Rosen held out, apparently out of fear that she’d be the victim of an attack ad in her tight reelection race this year. Unions and civil rights organizations pleaded with her, to no avail. She declined to meet with Edelman, instead having a staffer do it.
Rosen’s spokesman, Renzo Olivari, told me that “Senator Rosen was continuing to review this nomination” and shifted responsibility to the White House, which, Olivari said, “is ultimately responsible for making decisions about whether to renominate individuals for these positions.” Schumer could have forced a vote and put Rosen on the spot. But rather than risk defeat, he held off on invoking cloture on the nomination.
Advertisement
Maybe it would have been different if Edelman had had a home-state senator championing him. D.C. residents are denied such representation. Very likely it would have been different if the roles were reversed: Republican senators reliably rallied to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominees, even those with dubious credentials and wacky ideologies — such as Matthew Kacsmaryk, who tried to ban the abortion pill, and Aileen Cannon, who has made bizarre rulings in the Trump documents case.
As it is, a man who devoted his life to public service, fighting for workers and the poor, has been defeated by a Republican lie and Democratic spinelessness. Judge Edelman, still serving on the D.C. Superior Court, will be fine. But we’re all in trouble if Democrats can no longer summon the courage to defend the truth.
Share Comments
More from Opinions
HAND CURATED
- Opinion|A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.November 30, 2023Opinion|A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.November 30, 2023
- Opinion|Snow days help make childhood magical. Now they’re melting away.January 16, 2024Opinion|Snow days help make childhood magical. Now they’re melting away.January 16, 2024
- Opinion|After a near-tragedy, Boeing needs to straighten up and fly rightJanuary 12, 2024Opinion|After a near-tragedy, Boeing needs to straighten up and fly rightJanuary 12, 2024
View 3 more stories
Loading...
This country has no more devoted a public servant than Judge Todd Edelman of the D.C. Superior Court. While other law graduates joined white-shoe firms, Edelman, a friend of mine since college, spent years as a public defender, as a labor union lawyer and, for the last 14 years, on the D.C. bench, where he is now presiding judge of the civil division.
Yet few have been so abused by the Senate’s broken judicial confirmation process as Edelman.
President Barack Obama nominated him in 2016 to fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. But this was during then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s blockade of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, and Edelman, caught up like other nominees in the Republicans’ refusal to move Obama’s judicial picks, never got a vote, or even a hearing.
President Biden nominated Edelman to the same court in 2022. Republicans struck again, this time with an ugly, Willie-Horton style smear campaign. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) fabricated an outrageous lie, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that a man Edelman released in a pretrial hearing “went on to murder — to murder — an 11-year-old.” In reality, the man in question hadn’t murdered anyone, but Blackburn badly distorted the facts of a case to suggest that Edelman was to blame for a child’s death.
This time, Democrats controlled the Senate. They could have, and should have, called out Blackburn’s nonsense and confirmed Edelman. Instead, they cowered. They shied from defending Edelman, or even pointing out the facts; during the 15-month ordeal, not one Democratic senator said one public word in support. A few in the 51-member Democratic caucus — the always-cagey Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), along with Jacky Rosen (Nev.) — refused to commit their votes. The months dragged on, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) refused to schedule a vote before the Senate recessed for Christmas break. Two weeks ago, the White House pulled the plug rather than resubmit the nomination for the new session of Congress.
Edelman was an important pick for progressives. Only 6 percent of federal judges have been labor-union lawyers or otherwise came from the “economic justice” sphere, the progressive Alliance for Justice has found. The number of judges who were public defenders is not much higher. Edelman, in addition to his years defending those who couldn’t afford lawyers, served the Service Employees International Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the United Mine Workers, the United Steelworkers, the International Association of Firefighters and the AFL-CIO.
“Judges with experience in both economic justice and public defense are essentially nonexistent,” said Jake Faleschini, a legal director at the Alliance for Justice. “Judge Edelman was a unicorn nominee, and we would all be better off with him on the federal bench.” The group is “extremely disappointed that he didn’t receive a vote.” The right-wing Blackburn had ideological reasons to sabotage a judge who intimately understands the legal struggles of workers and the poor — and Democrats had every reason to champion him.
We live in a world in which MAGA types such as Blackburn use disinformation as a matter of course. That’s a given. But if Democrats are so cowardly that they won’t fight back and won’t answer the lies with truth, then the battle to preserve our democracy is already lost no matter who wins at the polls.
Blackburn rolled out her misrepresentation at Edelman’s confirmation hearing, in November 2022. She claimed that a few weeks after Edelman released the defendant, he participated “in the murder of an 11-year-old child.” She claimed that the defendant had previously shot “a gun in the street at 1 p.m. in broad daylight.” She claimed that a week before Edelman released him, “another judge had written an opinion denying his motion for release because he was a danger to the community.” She claimed that Edelman “knew that releasing him with a GPS ankle bracelet wouldn’t protect the community.”
Fox News dutifully amplified Blackburn’s claims with additional calumny from her in the headline: “A child is dead because Judge Edelman didn’t do his job, and now he wants a promotion.” It was at the Judiciary Committee’s meeting to vote on the nomination last February that she upgraded her accusation to the blatantly false claim that the released defendant murdered a child.
There’s a fair argument to be made that D.C. law, which requires a uniquely high standard be met for detention, leaves too many dangerous people on the streets, frustrating police and prosecutors. But Blackburn wasn’t making such a fair argument; she was engaging in a vile distortion.
Court records show that in the gun-possession case for which Edelman released the defendant, Christian Wingfield, to home detention, he had not been charged with a violent offense. Though he had been caught with a gun before, he had no violent offenses on his record. He had never been charged with firing a gun “in the street at 1 p.m.” as Blackburn alleged, or at any other time in any other place. The court’s Pretrial Services Agency, which has had only 1 percent of those under its supervision arrested for violent crimes, had approved Wingfield for electronic monitoring.
Also omitted from Blackburn’s smear: The pretrial hearing before Edelman was in May 2020, as the pandemic was exploding, and jurisdictions nationwide were struggling with covid-19 in their prison populations. Wingfield was at a heightened risk because of asthma and other conditions. And finally, the other judge who had declined to release the man a week earlier had apparently confused the case with another, because he based the ruling on “the government’s opposition,” when in fact the government had filed no such opposition.
As for the “murder,” three months after Wingfield’s release, he was with a group of men that fired guns near an anti-violence cookout on July 4, 2020, and a stray bullet killed 11-year-old Davon McNeal as he ran from a vehicle to an apartment. Though all four in the group were initially charged with murder, prosecutors later determined that Wingfield, though armed, did not fire a gun at all that night, much less the fatal shot. He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter because, by running down the street with the group involved in the shooting, he “knowingly associated” himself with the crime.
Retired federal appeals court judge Beverly Martin, now with New York University, wrote to senators to say this: “I don’t know any judge — whether nominated by a Democratic or Republican president — who would have detained [the defendant] under the law and circumstances that existed at the time.”
Democratic senators were aware of all this, and they could have pushed back against the smear. They could have pointed out that, of the hundreds of criminal trials and thousands of criminal hearings Edelman presided over, he had only been reversed on appeal twice. Instead, they shrank from the fight.
On the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) was at first concerned about Blackburn’s allegations, but he backed Edelman in the committee vote after learning the facts. Other senators were likewise reassured. Manchin and Sinema were their usual noncommittal selves, though they seldom tank a nomination when the rest of the Democratic caucus is on board. But Rosen held out, apparently out of fear that she’d be the victim of an attack ad in her tight reelection race this year. Unions and civil rights organizations pleaded with her, to no avail. She declined to meet with Edelman, instead having a staffer do it.
Rosen’s spokesman, Renzo Olivari, told me that “Senator Rosen was continuing to review this nomination” and shifted responsibility to the White House, which, Olivari said, “is ultimately responsible for making decisions about whether to renominate individuals for these positions.” Schumer could have forced a vote and put Rosen on the spot. But rather than risk defeat, he held off on invoking cloture on the nomination.
Maybe it would have been different if Edelman had had a home-state senator championing him. D.C. residents are denied such representation. Very likely it would have been different if the roles were reversed: Republican senators reliably rallied to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominees, even those with dubious credentials and wacky ideologies — such as Matthew Kacsmaryk, who tried to ban the abortion pill, and Aileen Cannon, who has made bizarre rulings in the Trump documents case.
As it is, a man who devoted his life to public service, fighting for workers and the poor, has been defeated by a Republican lie and Democratic spinelessness. Judge Edelman, still serving on the D.C. Superior Court, will be fine. But we’re all in trouble if Democrats can no longer summon the courage to defend the truth.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Mort Laitner
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
visit website
