WASHINGTON (Washington Insider Magazine) – Two sources involved in the process told CNN that the White House is set to pick former Alabama Senator Doug Jones to coach Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh through the confirmation procedure on Capitol Hill, filling the role known as “sherpa” in Washington.
Jones, a former federal prosecutor best known for prosecuting members of the Ku Klux Klan, has been a close ally of President Joe Biden for many years. He was present in Atlanta for the President’s speech on voting rights late last month, and he keeps in touch with the White House on a regular basis. Jones and the White House both declined to respond.
Jones will be a member of a large team that the White House is putting together to work effectively with the nominee. Veterans of the Obama administration’s judicial confirmation battles will also be on the team.
Jones was also a strong candidate for Attorney General in Biden’s cabinet. He eventually joined a law firm in Washington, DC, and has been a CNN contributor for the past year. He was a member of the United States Senate from 2018 to 2021, winning an extraordinary election when Sen. Jeff Sessions resigned to serve as the Trump administration’s attorney general. Jones, who ran as a moderate Democrat, was defeated by Tommy Tuberville, the state’s junior Republican senator, in the very conservative state in 2020.
Jones was appointed as the U. S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama by former President Bill Clinton in 1997. Jones served as the state’s senior federal prosecutor when 4 African American girls were slain in the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, a watershed incident in the civil rights movement.
Jones’ nomination comes only hours after Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with the Senate Judiciary committee’s senior Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley and the Committee Chair Dick Durbin, at the White House to discuss the future Supreme Court vacancy.
The discussion reflects the President’s promise to bring senators from both sides to the White House to provide feedback on who he should pick to the nation’s highest court to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer.
The President has stated that he will appoint the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, and the White House has stated that it is now casting a wide net in its search for candidates.
