Trump district court nominee withdraws
Video of pointed questions by GOP senator went viral.
Matthew Petersen, a nominee to the federal judiciary, has withdrawn from consideration days after a video clip showed him unable to answer basic questions about legal procedure, the White House confirmed Monday.
Petersen, nominated for a seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is the third President Donald Trump judicial pick to withdraw in the past week amid criticism from Democrats and others about their qualifications.
White House spokesperson Raj Shah confirmed that Trump had accepted Petersen’s withdrawal but declined to comment further.
The video of Petersen that went viral Thursday captured five minutes of pointed questioning by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., at Petersen’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee the day before.
It was posted on Twitter by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who wrote that it showed Kennedy asking Petersen “basic questions of law & he can’t answer a single one.”
As of Friday, the White House was standing by Petersen, with a spokesperson saying that he was qualified and that “the President’s opponents” were “trying to distract from the record-setting success the President has had on judicial nominations.”
Petersen, a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, has been a member of the Federal Election Commission since 2008 but has no trial experience. His tenure on the FEC overlapped with that of now-White House counsel Don McGahn for about five years.
“While I am honored to have been nominated for this position, it has become clear to me over the past few days that my nomination has become a distraction — and that is not fair to you or your Administration,” Petersen wrote to Trump in a letter dated Saturday. “I had hoped my nearly two decades of public service might carry more weight than my two worst minutes on television. However, I am no stranger to political realities, and I do not wish to be a continued distraction from the important work of your administration and the Senate.”
Until last week, Trump’s record of getting judicial nominees confirmed by the Senate stood out as a bright spot for a president who has struggled for big wins on Capitol Hill.