CONTACT: J.P. Duffy or Joshua Arnold, (866) FRC-NEWS or (866)-372-6397
More than 50 individuals and organizations sign onto FRC letter calling for the rejection of her nomination
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Family Research Council (FRC) and a coalition of more than 50 individuals and organizations sent a letter today to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in opposition to President Biden's nomination of Nancy Abudu to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Abudu is currently the strategic litigation director for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), infamous for its decades-long managerial corruption and notorious for unscrupulously designating its political opponents as "hate groups" or "extremists." In the first conviction under the post-9/11 District of Columbia terrorism statute, the convicted terrorist, who targeted FRC's headquarters, was shown to have been motivated by the SPLC's "hate group" designation and related identifying information.
The letter stated in part:
"Ms. Abudu works for a disreputable organization that has no business being a feeder for positions to any judicial office -- not even of a traffic court -- let alone the second highest court system in the United States. She is a political activist not a jurist and is unfit to serve at the federal appellate level."
It continued:
"In March 2019 the leadership structure of the SPLC blew up spectacularly with all the senior leaders resigning within months of each other. Morris Dees, the founder of the SPLC, was fired on March 13, 2019, in response to persistent, long-term charges of racial discrimination and sex harassment. There was a mountain of evidence in the form of published articles attesting to the sleazy corporate culture at the SPLC long before the beginning of 2019 when Ms. Abudu arrived there.
"Nancy Abudu, the nominee under consideration by this committee, began working for the SPLC in February 2019 one month before Dees's departure. The job application process for a senior position most certainly would have begun in 2018. Consequently, the articles just referenced could have been accessed with little effort had Abudu wanted to know why the SPLC possessed such a notorious reputation even in political circles on the left. She clearly did not look, or if she did learn about the toxic racial and sexual climate at the SPLC -- she did not care about it. The committee should determine whether Ms. Abudu was interviewed by Morris Dees or any other senior leaders who were forced to resign.
"Abudu's acceptance of a senior litigation management role inside America's largest political defamation factory disqualifies her from any position in which she would be expected to serve as an impartial arbiter of facts and law. Furthermore, Abudu had no problem accepting a senior position at the SPLC when it was still being run by Morris Dees and Richard Cohen. She clearly lacks the temperament to hold a life-time appointment to be a federal judge."
-30-
