Sources close to the White House told Newsmax on Wednesday that the two front-runners to succeed retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy are the runners-up for the appointment last year that went to Neil Gorsuch: Bill Pryor of Alabama and Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania, both judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Pryor (11th Circuit), who succeeded U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions as state attorney general of Alabama, and Hardiman (3rd Circuit), a Bush appointee to both the District Court and later Court of Appeals, are also strong favorites of the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation — both conservative outlets.
Both, in fact, were on the list of 21 potential high court candidates that the Heritage Foundation assisted candidate Trump in compiling in May 2016 and expanded in September of that year.
In a televised debate in February 2016 on the same evening that then-Justice Antonin Scalia died, Trump actually named Alabama’s Pryor and Appeals Court Judge Diane Sykes as two jurists he would consider if he had the opportunity to fill Scalia’s seat.
On May 4 of last year, Newsmax asked White House press secretary Sarah Sanders if the president would take a name from the list of 21 from which he chose Gorsuch to succeed Scalia.
"My understanding is that he would stay focused and draw from that list," Sanders told me. "I don't see any reason for him to go a different direction."
There is particular interest in the legal community in Pryor, 56, because of his 2003 call for the removal of then-Chief Justice Roy Moore from the Alabama Supreme Court for disobeying a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Judicial Building.
Moore last year lost a special U.S. Senate election to Democrat Doug Jones, who is considered a possible Democratic vote to confirm Pryor (who once assigned him to be prosecutor in a major civil rights case while he was state attorney general).
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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