Attorney General Chris Carr and 17 state attorneys general have sent a letter to U.S. Senate leadership to strongly urge that they reject President Joe Biden’s nomination of Nancy Abudu to fill a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
Carr joined the attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and West Virginia in sending the letter.
“Based upon her record and prior comments, it is clear that Nancy Abudu has no interest in upholding the rule of law but is far more concerned with promoting her own extreme beliefs and agenda,” said Carr. “Throughout her career, Ms. Abudu has perpetuated false claims regarding Georgia’s election integrity law, which yielded record-high voter turnout, and vilified our law enforcement officers. Political activism of any kind does not belong on the bench, and I urge the Senate in the strongest possible terms to reject this nomination to ensure fairness and integrity on the court.”
Ms. Abudu is the Director of Strategic Litigation for the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an organization infamous for leveling unfounded charges of “hate” against its political opponents. The letter from the attorneys general documents how Ms. Abudu has used her position at the SPLC to engage in these same dishonest and divisive actions. She has compared her fellow Americans to Jim-Crow-era racists, declared our criminal-justice system to be “practically the same system as during slavery,” disparaged law enforcement as racist, and aligned herself with self-proclaimed “radical movement legal activists” who view “policing” as “the true threat to our collective safety.” Moreover, she has consistently and baselessly disparaged Alabama, Florida and Georgia in particular, the three states she would be called upon to judge as a member of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Ms. Abudu’s history of false and inflammatory rhetoric “doesn’t show simple professional disagreement. It shows, at best, insuperable bias. It more likely shows dishonesty. And it certainly shows unfitness for judicial office.”
Ms. Abudu has asserted that Georgia has a “culture of law enforcement that still targets Black and Brown people.” She has derided the entire State, claiming that “Georgia continues to be a bad actor,” and that the state legislature “is committed to keeping us in the past and that is scary.”
The letter further notes Ms. Abudu’s membership and past role as a leader in the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a self-described group of “radical movement legal activists.” The NLG recently declared that “policing is the true threat to our collective safety.” The attorneys general explain that “Ms. Abudu’s longstanding and ongoing association with this radical, anti-police group is yet another ground for rejecting her nomination.”
The attorneys general say that in light of her casual willingness to demonize her fellow Americans, her extensive record of inflammatory and divisive untruths, and her longtime association with dangerous and radical organizations, the attorneys general conclude their letter, “[Ms. Abudu] has . . . shown herself unfit for this lifetime appointment. Because our judiciary needs jurists who will uphold the rule of law, not ‘radical movement legal activists’ in robes, the Senate should reject Ms. Abudu’s nomination.”