White House Chooses Doug Jones to Guide Supreme Court Nominee

Many others observed as contenders consist of Justice Leondra R. Kruger of the California Supreme Court and J. Michelle Childs, whom Mr. Biden claimed he would nominate for the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia Circuit, a recurrent staging ground for possible Supreme Court docket justices.

For the reason that meet up with-and-greets in Washington have the potential for combustion, earlier guides have instructed nominees to a lot more or fewer adopt a communicate-when-spoken-to purpose. Tom C. Korologos, a former Republican lobbyist and ambassador, has been associated in more than 300 Senate confirmation processes, which include all those of Justices William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, and the nominee Robert H. Bork. In an job interview, Mr. Korologos examine from a specific sheaf of notes that he experienced collected more than the several years — a veritable dos and don’ts record for prospective nominees.

“The initial detail that transpires is you say to the nominee, ‘Your part indeed is that of a bridegroom at a marriage ceremony,’” he mentioned. “‘Stand to the correct, be on time and preserve your mouth shut.’ You have got to choose this process quite severely, expend just about every moment boning up on your hearing, and really don’t suppose you’ve received the position.”

He was not completed.

“Don’t go wherever in close proximity to the courtroom,” Mr. Korologos explained. “Don’t meet up with with any individual. If you are receiving a haircut or acquiring your nails done, really don’t say a term to any person, and reserve your reviews for the listening to. Somebody will have listened to it.”

Mr. Korologos, now 88, used to prep nominees by asking them to look at any skeletons in their closets. “What is there in your track record that you have finished that is heading to occur up in a hearing?” he mentioned he would request. “I’m not asking you to notify me, but get an reply to it due to the fact they are heading to uncover it and ask it.”

The last nomination workforce, Mr. Korologos explained, will most possible engage in yet another unusually named approach: so-identified as murder boards, where nominees and the nominee variety committee meet up with — in the previous it has been at the White House or at a non-public residence — and imagine of the nastiest achievable concerns that may well occur up in a hearing. Then they fling them at the nominee. Mr. Jones’s most modern sherpa predecessors involved Jon Kyl, who served three conditions as a Republican senator from Arizona and guided Brett M. Kavanaugh by means of a single of the more bitter Senate affirmation procedures in modern historical past.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was rapidly-tracked to her seat times prior to the 2020 election, did not have a Senate guidebook, a choice that aides of President Donald J. Trump stated was because of coronavirus concerns.