More on Judge Vyskocil

"There's no reason to think she's not going to play it fair."

A reader who was directly involved on the GOP side during the Trump judicial confirmation wars has a different view of Judge Vyskocil’s confirmation than the one presented here. He writes:

We always saw Mary Kay as one of our [selections]. She was a FedSoc member who did a lot of work for the Archdiocese in private practice. . . .

As I recall we had a 2-1 deal with the Senators in NY and this was the breakdown of those picks:

Mary Kay Viskocil (SDNY): Trump

Rachel Kovner (EDNY): Trump

Eric Komittee (EDNY): Trump

Phil Halpern (SDNY): Trump 

John Cronan (SDNY): Trump

John Sinatra (WDNY): Trump

Gary Brown (renom) (EDNY): Schumer

Lewis Liman (SDNY): Schumer

Diane Gujarati (EDNY): Gillibrand

That said, Schumer didn't clear all of the people Trump wanted in this tranche. I can think of a couple in particular whom we really wanted to nominate and who were preemptively shot down by Schumer. So even though MKV was a Trump pick, she was Schumer-approved.

She's also a very talented lawyer and there's no reason to think she's not going to play it fair. I'm sure Gibson Dunn's filing screwups [as counsel for Bragg] — no Boutros declaration, no copy of the subpoena — didn't sit well with the former longtime Simpson Thatcher partner!