Among the candidates for President Trump’s potential Supreme Court pick to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a little-known Washington attorney who joined the White House to handle judicial nominations and has advised on a broad swathe of legal and constitutional issues.
Like Ginsburg, Kate Comerford Todd, 45, is a graduate of Cornell University. She is the only attorney on Trump’s shortlist who has never served as a judge.
“She’s a lovely lady,” one former White House official told the Washington Examiner, who said that Todd, a former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas who has twice counseled the White House, was a typically well-credentialed Washington attorney.
Todd’s addition to Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist two weeks ago came in an announcement that also featured Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Ted Cruz of Texas, and one presumed front-runner, Barbara Lagoa.
“She is absolutely brilliant,” attorney Helgi Walker, who, like Todd, served as a Thomas law clerk and as an associate White House counsel to George W. Bush, told the Associated Press. “She is thoughtful, caring, considerate. She always tries to get it right, no matter what she’s doing.”
Conservative legal activist Adam Mortara, who also clerked for Thomas and has known Todd for more than 20 years, said Todd seemed to heed Thomas’s rebuke that withdrawing from an issue of principle was a “pathway to personal destruction.”
“I think the first person that I ever met, other than Justice Thomas, who I realized fully embodied that principle is Kate,” he told the Associated Press. “I’ve never seen her back down on an issue of principle. I’ve never seen her compromise her principles.”
Mortara added, “On issues of right or wrong, or on issues of what the law is or isn’t, there is no moving her.”
Todd joined the Trump administration in early 2019 as deputy to White House counsel Pat Cipollone, one year before Cipollone led Trump’s impeachment defense in the Senate.
Cipollone is not expecting Todd to be chosen, a source close to the White House said, calling it simply “a nice thing for him to do for his employee.”
“It tees her up,” this source said, suggesting that Todd’s inclusion among the candidates would bolster her professional standing.
Prior to this, Todd was a senior attorney at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s litigation center and was floated as a potential candidate for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2017 to replace Judge Janice Rogers Brown.
Trump has said he’ll choose “a very talented, very brilliant woman” and will announce his pick at 5 p.m. EDT on Saturday.
“Momentum is on the side of Republicans to fill that seat,” White House communications director Alyssa Farah told Fox News on Monday. “Our priority is filling the seat with a highly qualified judge who meets the president’s intent for what he’d like to see on the Supreme Court.”
Presumed front-runners for the president’s nomination are federal appeals court Judges Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa. Trump met with Barrett at the White House on Monday.
He is expected to meet later this week with Lagoa, a Florida native and daughter of Cuban exiles whom supporters view as a potential asset in the must-win battleground.
This will be Trump’s third Supreme Court justice pick.
The White House declined to comment.
