SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 4.11.2024
It’s been nearly two years since the San Francisco MAGA gang spent 8M in its successful political lynching of District Attorney Chesa Boudin.
Chesa has diplomatically and quietly, perhaps too quietly, departed the toxic political scene of San Francisco. Now ensconced at the University of California School of Law as the founding executive director of the Criminal Law & Justice Center.
Nonetheless Chesa is still convenient political fodder for reactionary Republicans and credulous Democrats in the US Senate. The subject of this abysmal behavior is the nominee for a position on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. Adeel Mangi would be the first Muslim to serve on a federal appeals court.
Why are the know nothings in the Senate so put out? Adeel Mangi serves on the advisory board of the Alliance of Families for Justice. A New York non profit. So, what?
Here’s the rub. The Alliance sponsored a fellowship in the name of Kathy Boudin. Chesa’s mother. She was imprisoned 20 years for her part in the October 1981 robbery of a Brinks truck. Three police officers were killed. Kathy Boudin never fired a weapon. She was a getaway driver.
After her parole, with the help of then law student Chesa in 2003, Kathy Boudin became a stellar citizen. She earned a doctoral degree. Became a college teacher in social work and law.
Chesa was a year old at the time of the 1981 incident in Nyack, New York.
Still, the San Francisco MAGA crowd kept this yoke on Chesa’s back from the time he announced for DA in late 2018 until his political lynching on June 7, 2022. And Chesa continues to have abuse tossed his way.
Now the abuse is moved to a national stage. Adeel Mangi may pay the price. It’s the worst kind of character assassination and guilt by association. Directed toward the nominee, Chesa Boudin, and his late mother Kathy Boudin.
Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle – Bob Egelko – 4.5.2024
Chesa Boudin’s background as the son of radicals imprisoned for taking part in a fatal armed robbery helped to fuel the campaign for his recall as San Francisco’s district attorney in 2022. Now, President Joe Biden’s nomination of an attorney who would become the first Muslim to serve on a federal appeals court appears to be doomed because of the nominee’s distant connection to Boudin’s late mother.
Adeel Mangi has been endorsed for the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia by groups that include the National Council of Jewish Women and the Anti-Defamation League as well as the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the NAACP. But three Democratic senators, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have come out against him, probably enough to block his confirmation in the closely divided Senate.
The reason? For Cortez Masto, it’s Mangi’s membership on the advisory board of the Alliance of Families for Justice, a New York-based nonprofit that provides support and legal representation for the families of prisoners.
Mangi, who practices civil law in New Jersey, said in a letter to Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., that he is not involved in the operations of Alliance of Families for Justice and worked with them only in a legal case for the family of a mentally ill inmate who was killed in prison, winning a settlement that required installation of cameras and microphones at the prison. He said he did not know Kathy Boudin and had nothing to do with the fellowship named for her.
“I condemn any violence against law enforcement officers,” Mangi wrote, noting the endorsement of his nomination by several police groups, though others have opposed him.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said Mangi “is being targeted by a malicious and debunked smear campaign solely because he would make history as the first Muslim to serve as a federal appellate judge.”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/muslim-nominee-kathy-boudin-19387930.php
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