http://www.dailywire.com/news/judge-jackson-prepped-for-her-hearings-by-a-former-demand-justice-member-denies-relationship-to-dark-money-groups-pushing-her-scotus-nomination
By Mary Margaret Olohan
The Daily Wire
March 22, 2022
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson denied knowledge of or relationships to dark money groups pushing court packing during her confirmation hearings Tuesday.
But the Supreme Court nominee has been prepped for her hearings by multiple White House officials who formerly worked for Demand Justice, a judicial activism group with ties to the dark money consulting group Arabella Advisers.
Both White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and Deputy White House Counsel Paige Herwig worked for Demand Justice.
Herwig manages the internal flow of information to President Joe Biden on judicial nominations and has held mock preparation sessions with Jackson. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Psaki served as the organization’s “communications consultant” and on the advisory board of the Demand Justice project Supreme Court Voter, Fox News reported, while Herwig served as Demand Justice’s deputy chief counsel.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Wire.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn ~ Demand Justice – a radical progressive dark-money group that backs Judge Jackson’s nomination – is pushing Democrats to pack the Court.
10:11 AM · Mar 22, 2022
Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of conservative-leaning Americans for Public Trust, suggested to Fox News in April 2021 that Herwig serves as “an insider in the White House to help usher these judicial nominations through that fit Demand Justice’s criteria.”
“They want to add seats to the Supreme Court, they want to add term limits for justices, they want to overhaul it and swing not just the Supreme Court but all levels of the judiciary more progressive,” said Sutherland.
When Herwig was appointed to the White House, Demand Justice celebrated in a statement that noted Biden was committed to nominating diverse “public defenders, civil rights lawyers, and legal aid attorneys” to federal judgeships.
“President-elect Biden is off to a phenomenal start when it comes to judicial nominations,” said Demand Justice Chief Counsel Christopher Kang in a statement at the time. “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,” added Kang, who served as Deputy White House Counsel during the Obama-Biden administration.
Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker also denied “much” knowledge of Demand Justice, Politico reported Tuesday — though Booker has personally spoken at a Demand Justice event.
“I honestly don’t know that much about them,” Booker, who is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“If you pick the ACLU, or the [Center for American Progress] those are groups that we’ve worked with. They’re not to us what the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society are to” Republicans, he added.
The Daily Wire previously reported that leftist groups, activists, and lawmakers seek to intimidate, threaten, and smear the reputations of Supreme Court justices through a decades-long campaign to control the court.
That campaign has heightened in recent months as Democrats and leftist activists observe Justice Clarence Thomas’s influence growing and realize they have “lost their stronghold on the court,” Judicial Crisis Network President Carrie Severino said in a phone interview.
The left has long taken the court for granted, Severino said, believing the Supreme Court was “their ace in the hole for getting policies achieved that they couldn’t do through the elected branches.”
“The fact that we actually have conservative, originalist majority in the court is making the left crazy,” Severino said. “That is really what’s making them so outraged and is driving some of these new lows in our politics surrounding the courts.”
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence
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