Matteo Godi, a former clerk for Biden Supreme Court contender Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, has been accused of editing his former boss’s Wikipedia page and those of her potential rivals in a bid to play up her accomplishments while trashing her adversaries, a probe by Politico has alleged.
Jackson, 51, was appointed by Biden to serve as judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 2021, and is widely considered a top potential contender for the Supreme Court seat - with the president committing publicly to pick an African American woman for the job.
According to the outlet’s sources, Godi worked for Jackson between 2019 and 2020. Going by the Wikipedia user name “H2rty,” he edited Jackson’s page “as a matter of course” going back to 2017, and made over 20 edits on the pages of seven judges potentially in competition for SCOTUS between 28 January and 2 February.
Sources revealed that “H2rty’s” edits were broadly aimed at making Jackson look good to liberals, while marring the reputations of South Carolina Federal District Court Judge Michelle Childs and California Supreme Court Judge Leondra Kruger, two other contenders for SCOTUS.
The former staffer also edited the pages of other judges, including United States District Court Judge for the District of Minnesota Wilhelmina Wright, United States Circuit Court judges Tiffany Cunningham and Holly Thomas, and Court of Appeals nominee Arrianna Freeman.
Godi is reported to have removed a reference to Jackson’s involvement on the advisory board of a Baptist church, to have played up the ire she has supposedly received from conservative figures, and to have shifted the blame on a ruling delay involving Jackson related to a congressional subpoena against a senior Trump staffer.
Childs, meanwhile, was characterized by Godi in his edits as someone who worked with businesses on race and gender-based complaints, a big no-no for liberals, while Kruger was characterized as a “moderate” in general and a “conservative on criminal matters.”
It’s not immediately clear whether changing the Wikipedia pages of a particular judge will play any role in the decisions made by Biden and his staff about who to nominate for the Supreme Court. In 2020, Biden picked former California prosecutor Kamala Harris as his running mate for VP, despite her “tough on crime” approach, which, with the aid of Biden’s 1994 Crime Bill, helped facilitate the incarceration of thousands of African Americans on drug use crimes and other minor offenses – such as the truancy of their school-age children.
Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democrat Congresswoman and presidential candidate who helped expose Harris’ record against minorities and pushed her to drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination in 2020, has bashed Biden over his plans to limit his search for a new SCOTUS only to African American women. “He should not be choosing a Supreme Court justice based on the colour of their skin or sex, but rather on their qualifications and commitment to uphold our Constitution,” Gabbard, herself of mixed Samoan and European descent and a Hindu by religion, said.