Washington, DC – U.S. Senators Lisa Blunt Rochester and Chris Coons (both D-Del.), released the following statement on President Trump’s nomination of Jennifer Mascott to fill the open Delaware seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit:
“For months, we have worked with the White House in good faith to identify and interview qualified Delawareans for this lifetime position on the Third Circuit. We interviewed several promising candidates, including sitting members of the federal judiciary, with deep roots in the Delaware legal community and the qualifications to serve our state and the Third Circuit with distinction. We were encouraged when the White House Counsel’s Office – led by a Delawarean – interviewed those candidates as well. We had hope that the advice and consent process set out in the Constitution could work because it had in the past. During President Trump’s first term, Delaware’s senators identified, and a bipartisan Senate unanimously confirmed, two consensus judicial nominees to Delaware’s federal bench.
“That was not the case this time around. The Trump administration has now nominated someone with whom we have never met and who has little – if any – connection to our state or to the Third Circuit. Ms. Mascott has never been a member of the Delaware bar and was only admitted to practice before the Third Circuit two months ago. Her key qualification appears to be that she works in President Trump’s White House Counsel’s Office. She has never been a judge of any kind, yet she is nominated to one of the highest judicial posts in the country. As far as we know, her relationship to Delaware is confined to a vacation beach house she sometimes visits in our state.”
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Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester represents Delaware in the United States Senate where she serves on the Committees on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; Environment and Public Works; and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.