AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File
- Joan Larsen, a federal judge on President Trump’s shortlist for the Supreme Court, was once a volunteer for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 1987, according to CNN.
- During her nomination process to the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Larsen completed a questionnaire for the Senate Judiciary Committee where she detailed her work in Biden’s first presidential campaign.
- In 1996, Larsen volunteered for the presidential campaign of Republican Bob Dole of Kansas.
- Larsen clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and boasts strong conservative credentials as a member of the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation.
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Joan Larsen, a federal judge on President Trump’s shortlist for the Supreme Court, was once a volunteer for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 1987, according to CNN.
During a Monday interview on Fox News, Trump said that he had narrowed his list of candidates to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to five people, mentioning a “a great one from Michigan.” According to an administration source, Trump was referring to Larsen.
President Trump announced on Tuesday that he would nominate a successor to Ginsburg on Saturday, a day after the pioneering jurist will lie in state at the US Capitol.
Larsen, a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which covers Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, was nominated to the federal bench by Trump in 2017. During her nomination process, she completed a questionnaire for the Senate Judiciary Committee where she detailed her work in Biden’s first presidential campaign in response to a question about holding a leadership position in a political party or election committee.
“To the best of my recollection, during the summer of 1987, I did some low-level volunteer work (stuffing envelopes, making phones calls) for the campaign in Iowa,” she wrote.
In 1996, Larsen volunteered for the presidential campaign of Republican Bob Dole of Kansas, where, based on her memories of the time, she "drafted or edited one or two position papers, from facts supplied by the campaign."
Biden launched his first presidential campaign in 1987, which fizzled out that same year. In 1988, then-Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts won the Democratic nomination and went on to lose the election to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. In 1996, Dole lost the general election to incumbent President Bill Clinton.
Larsen graduated from Northwestern University's law school and clerked for Judge David Sentelle of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. She saw Scalia as a mentor and a role model.
In 2017, during Larsen's hearings for the Sixth Circuit nomination, she was asked how Scalia's jurisprudence affected her way of interpreting the law.
"Justice Scalia believed in following the law where the law led him," Larsen said. "He never worked the other way around. That is, find the result that you liked and then find the precedents to fit it."
Larsen boasts strong conservative credentials as a member of the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. She also served in the Department of Justice under former president George W. Bush.