Judiciary Snapshot: Trump Nominees Confirmed May 20-24

When faced with these questions, Clark followed other Trump nominees' leads by saying he would follow relevant Supreme Court precedent and leave his personal views behind once he took the bench.

"While I have advocated on behalf of clients asserting the right to life, the numerous letters to the Judiciary Committee in support of my nomination demonstrate that I have a history of impartiality, integrity and honesty," Clark wrote in response to questions submitted after his nomination hearing.

Clark has worked at the St. Louis Runnymede Law Group since 2008, previously spending time at the firms Husch Blackwell and Polsinelli. 

Carl J. Nichols, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

Nichols was confirmed with a 55-43 vote on Wednesday.

When serving in the George W. Bush Justice Department, Nichols was the lead attorney defending White House counsel Harriet Miers and former White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten from a House committee's effort to enforce a subpoena seeking their testimony on the administration's firing of U.S. attorneys.

In a brief Nichols signed off on, the administration argued the dispute was not meant to be resolved in the courts and that Miers and Bolten's testimony would be inappropriate because it concerned the advice of the president's "most intimate advisers." The arguments are similar to those the Trump administration has advanced in fighting against House subpoenas.  

When asked about his views of executive power now, Nichols told Senator Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, he argued the case as best he could for his client, but that his job would fundamentally change on the bench.

"As a litigator representing the executive branch in those cases, I vigorously defended my clients' interests and the policy decisions made by other, more senior executive branch employees, but was not responsible for those policy decisions," Nichols wrote in response to questions submitted after his nomination hearing. "If I am confirmed, I will not be a litigator representing a party, but a judge whose obligation is to decide cases fairly, based on existing law and relevant precedent."

Nichols joined the firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr in 2010, having spent 2005 to 2009 at the Justice Department. Before joining the Bush administration, Nichols worked at the Washington, D.C., firm Boies Schiller Flexner and clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and D.C. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman.

Kenneth Bell, U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina

Bell was the final judge the Senate confirmed this week, heading to the bench with a 55-43 vote Wednesday.

Bell, an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in 1990, faced questions about public comments he made about abortion and the 2016 election.

In one letter to the editor he wrote in the Charlotte Observerin 1995, Bell decried the "indefensibility of the abortion rights position" and said abortion is only a "hard decision" if the "mother knows it is a child rather than a hangnail."

Bell told senators he respects that abortion is a difficult decision for women and, like other nominees, promised to abide by Supreme Court precedent on the subject if confirmed to the bench.

Similarly, Bell faced questions about a 2016 opinion piece he penned arguing Hillary Clinton should have been prosecuted for using a private email server while serving as secretary of state. A former federal prosecutor, Bell said former FBI Director James Comey "got out of his lane" by recommending Clinton not be charged.

"My primary criticism of Director Comey in the July 2016 op-ed was his usurpation of the attorney general's charging decision," Bell explained to Hirono in questions submitted in writing after his nomination hearing. "FBI agents conduct investigations; Department of Justice officials make charging decisions. In this instance, Director Comey assumed the authority to do both."

Bell has been a partner at the Charlotte, N.C., firm McGuire Woods since 2009, and previously spent time at the firms Hunton & Williams and Mayer Brown.

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