Inside the White House Campaign to Get Kennedy to Retire

Its goal was to assure Justice Kennedy that his judicial legacy would be in good hands should he decide to step down at the end of the court’s term.

By ADAM LIPTAK and MAGGIE HABERMAN @ NYTimes.com 29 minutes ago

[....] There is reason to think, then, that Mr. Trump’s praise of Justice Kennedy was strategic.

Then, after Justice Gorsuch’s nomination was announced, a White House official singled out two candidates for the next Supreme Court vacancy: Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Judge Raymond M. Kethledge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati.

The two judges had something in common: They had both clerked for Justice Kennedy.

In the meantime, as the White House turned to stocking the lower courts, it did not overlook Justice Kennedy’s clerks. Mr. Trump nominated three of them to federal appeals courts: [....]

But they had a connection, one Mr. Trump was quick to note in the moments after his first address to Congress in February 2017. As he made his way out of the chamber, Mr. Trump paused to chat with the justice.

“Say hello to your boy,” Mr. Trump said. “Special guy.”

Mr. Trump was apparently referring to Justice Kennedy’s son, Justin. The younger Mr. Kennedy spent more than a decade at Deutsche Bank, eventually rising to become the bank’s global head of real estate capital markets, and he worked closely with Mr. Trump when he was a real estate developer, according to two people with knowledge of his role. [....]

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