White House narrows choices for CA 9th Circuit seats to five names

The White House has narrowed down its list of possible candidates for three open California seats on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to five names, nominations the administration could announce as early as next week.

Attorneys in the White House Counsel's Office are currently reviewing the names of Munger, Tolles & Olson partner Daniel P. Collins, Jenner & Block partner Kenneth K. Lee, Judge James E. Rogan of the Orange County Superior Court, Horvitz & Levy partner Jeremy B. Rosen and Patrick Bumatay, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District, according to several sources familiar with the selection process.

Collins is expected to be a shoo-in for one of the nominations, multiple sources said, but which candidates will be picked for the remaining two seats remains to be seen.

All five men declined to comment or did not respond to press inquiries Thursday.

Jenner & Block partner Kenneth K. Lee

Previously, Daniel Aaron Bress, a Washington, D.C. partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, was under consideration, but he is no longer a frontrunner, the sources indicated.

The decision to announce the final nominees is contingent on whether embattled U.S. Supreme Court nominee U.S. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh is successfully confirmed in the coming days, according to a source briefed by members of the White House Office of Legal Policy.

President Donald J. Trump announced via tweet in August that White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn would leave his post this fall.

The confirmation of Kavanaugh to the nation's highest court was set to be McGahn's final act, and White House lawyers hope to announce nominations to the 9th Circuit -- a court which has repeatedly attracted the ire of the president by blocking several of his administration's major policies -- as a coda to what they hope will be a victory.

But a vote by the Senate to reject Kavanaugh would put the administration back at square one, requiring the White House Counsel's Office to secure the successful confirmation of a different Supreme Court candidate before turning its eyes to the 9th Circuit, the sources indicated.

The public fight over the seats and the nominees, when they are announced, could be hard-fought, depending on whether the White House is able to get support for its candidates from California's two Democratic Party senators.

Orange County Superior Court Judge James E. Rogan

Neither commented on the potential nominees Thursday. A spokesperson for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who sits as the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the senator was too involved in Kavanaugh-related meetings to comment by press time. A spokesperson for Sen. Kamala Harris, who also sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, was not reached for this story.

If neither give their approval, Democrats on the committee could put up a fight. Among the judges they will replace were two of the 9th Circuit's most iconic liberal jurists, Harry Pregerson and Stephen Reinhardt, plus Alex Kozinski, the libertarian Ronald Reagan appointee who was less than a reliable judicial conservative.

Filling those three seats with conservative judges, while not tipping the ideological balance of the 9th Circuit, could significantly shape the jurisprudence of the court.

However, it might be hard to pinpoint the ideological leanings of the potential candidates. Aside from Rogan, who served as a Republican representing Orange County from 1997 to 2001 and has held a number of other posts in national and state government, none of the nominees have prior judicial experience.

A few have had governmental experience. Collins was an associate deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush Justice Department and Lee was an associate White House counsel for Bush.