https://www.motherjones.com/politic...o-withdraw-now-hes-at-the-justice-department/
Trump Judicial Pick Who Blogged Favorably About the KKK Had to Withdraw. Now He’s at the Justice Department.
Brett Talley had already been voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was on his way to a lifetime appointment to the federal bench when reporters discovered what he’d written about the Klan. Since 2005, Talley, a 36-year-old lawyer nominated for a seat on the US District Court for the Middle District of Alabama,
appeared to have posted more than 16,000 comments on a University of Alabama sports message board TideFans.com. Writing as BamainBoston, he commented on everything from race to abortion. He disparaged Muslims,
joked about statutory rape, and, most notably,
wrote approvingly about Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He defended the “first KKK” as something entirely different from the racist, violent organization it’s known as today.
After outcry about the comments and his general lack of qualifications for the job—Talley had never tried a case—he withdrew from consideration for the judgeship in December. But the controversy didn’t send him packing to Alabama. Instead, he simply continued working as deputy associate attorney general at the US Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy, where he oversaw the judicial nominations unit that advises the president and attorney general on the selection and confirmation of federal judges and conducts the vetting, interviewing, and evaluating of nominees. This spring, he moved to a more junior position at the Justice Department, as an assistant US attorney.
President Donald Trump has submitted 95 judicial nominations since Talley withdrew his own; 22 of those nominees have been confirmed. Among the 95 nominees are controversial picks such as
Wendy Vitter, wife of the disgraced former Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) and a staunch anti-abortion activist, and Oregon prosecutor Ryan Bounds, who
wrote a series of articles while at Stanford mocking multiculturalism and advocating for leniency for alleged campus rapists. Talley headed the Justice Department unit that helped select and vet many of those nominees.
Liberal legal groups that monitor judicial nominations were surprised to hear that Talley continued working at the Justice Department after his confirmation debacle. “That Talley was in charge of picking nominees might explain why the quality has been so low and their views so extreme,” says Caroline Fredrickson, president of the nonprofit American Constitution Society. “He obviously thought of himself as a good candidate and helped pick others in the same mold.”
Even before Talley’s Klan defense posts became public, he had an unusual resume for someone vying for a federal judgeship. Talley, who also
writes horror novels, had been an
amateur ghost-hunter for a number of years in Alabama. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 2007, he practiced law for less than three years and never tried a case.
