Just days after U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu in Washington withdrew from consideration for a pinnacle Justice Department publish, an association of women legal professionals decried the objections to her nomination as “misplaced.” It said they had been improperly used to derail her ascension to the third-in-command function as a companion legal professional.
Liu, the pinnacle federal prosecutor in Washington and a former Big Law white-collar associate, bumped into competition on the Senate Judiciary Committee over her past association with the National Association of Women Lawyers, a group that adversarial Justice Samuel Alito’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006. Liu’s past affiliation with the institution especially irked Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, a former Alito clerk, puzzled her conservative bona fides and her stance on abortion.
In a statement Monday, the NAWL broadly criticized the opposition to Liu’s nomination over her ties to the organization. She had been vice president in 2005 when the competition for Alito became publicized. The affiliation stated that the complaint of Liu might have a chilling effect on legal professionals interested in becoming members of bar associations and other professional agencies.
“Objections had been raised to U.S. Attorney Liu’s beyond involvement with NAWL—a 120-year-old non-profit organization that has fought to ensure equal opportunity and advancement of women legal professionals in the criminal justice system and gender equality under the law,” the organization stated in its declaration. “These objections were out of place and were improperly used to derail U.S. Attorney Liu’s nomination.”
Liu has stated she is no longer concerned about the institution’s letter opposing his affirmation to the Supreme Court. At the time, she had joined with fellow Yale Law School alumni in signing a letter assisting Alito’s nomination. “She supported Alito’s nomination and disagreed with the NAWL committee’s role,” the National Review’s David French, who stated he spoke with Liu, stated ultimate month.
In a remaining-ditch effort to store her nomination, U.S. Attorney General William Barr spoke on the phone with Lee. Still, the conversation devolved into a shouting match, according to a source acquainted with the speaker. Barr, who’d advocated for Liu for the nomination to serve as an associate attorney, appointed her closing week as the new chairwoman of his advisory committee of U.S. Attorneys. Liu previously became a companion at Morrison & Foerster and Jenner & Block earlier than joining the Trump administration in 2017.
