White House announces 9th Circuit California nominees

President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate three California attorneys to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, apparently rejecting a last minute offer by California's senior senator to agree on a consensus slate of picks.

In a statement released Wednesday afternoon, the White House said the president would nominate Patrick J. Bumatay, Daniel P. Collins and Kenneth K. Lee to three open seats on the federal appeals court which have been the focus of intense negotiations between the administration and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Collins, a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, and Lee, a partner at Jenner & Block, have both long been under consideration for nomination by lawyers in the White House Counsel's office.

Bumatay, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of California, came into consideration more recently.

The decision to announce the three attorneys stymies efforts by Feinstein, who sits as the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to find a consensus slate of picks that would ensure an easy confirmation.

In May, she suggested nominating Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District and Judge Andrew J. Guilford of the Central District and Boris Feldman, a securities litigator at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Koh was previously tapped for a 9th Circuit seat by President Barack Obama in 2016, but Senate Republicans allowed her nomination to expire without having a full vote.

White House lawyers rejected the offer, apparently upset Feinstein's proposed nominees did not include any names the administration suggested to her last summer.

Two sources familiar with negotiations over the seats told the Daily Journal in recent weeks White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn II had offered several compromise slates including Koh to Feinstein during the summer.

A spokeswoman for Feinstein told the Daily Journal last week no such offers were made, but wrote to McGahn Friday saying she would support a package deal including Koh, Collins and Orange County Superior Court James Rogan, who had been under consideration by the White House as a possible nominee.

Neither Feinstein nor her junior colleague, Sen. Kamala Harris, who is also a Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee, immediately responded to a request for comment Wednesday.

The three nominees to the 9th Circuit have pedigrees typical of Trump's picks for other federal courts. All of them men, the attorneys graduated from elite law schools and have impressive clerkships on their resumes

Bumatay is currently on detail to work with U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. A Harvard Law School graduate, he clerked for Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Sandra L. Townes of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. He spent several years in the U.S. Department of Justice after that.

Collins, a Stanford Law School graduate, clerked for 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Dorothy Nelson and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Formerly an associate deputy attorney general in the Department of Justice during the George W. Bush administration, Collins also worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Central district before joining Munger Tolles.

Lee, who graduated from Harvard Law School, clerked for 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Emilio M. Garza before working as an associate counsel to President George W. Bush.

In addition to filling seats for the 9th Circuit, the president selected a Superior Court judge and two private attorneys to sit as federal judges for the Central District.

Stanley Blumenfeld, the only nominee currently sitting on the bench, is a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge assigned to felony trials. Blumenfeld was a partner at O'Melveny & Myers LLP, where he focused on health care and environmental law. He was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District. He began his legal career by clerking for 9th Circuit Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall.

Trump also nominated attorneys Jeremy B. Rosen, a partner at Horvitz & Levy LLP, and Mark C. Scarsi, a partner at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCoy LLP.

Rosen's practice has focused on appellate litigation, primarily in the 9th Circuit, California Supreme Court, and California Courts of Appeal. His cases in the state's high court included the scope of California's anti-SLAPP statute, the Unruh Act and the application of the First Amendment to intra-church property disputes. Rosen, who had been under consideration for a 9th Circuit seat, started his legal career as a clerk for U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr. of the Central District and later 9th Circuit Judge Ferdinand F. Fernandez.

Scarsi serves as the chair for Milbank's global intellectual property practice and is the managing partner of the Los Angeles office. He is a former software engineer, designing and developing detection and signal processing computer systems for U.S. defense applications.

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Staff Writer Paula-Lehman-Ewing contributed to this report.