Third Circuit nominee David Porter appeared this morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I did not attend the hearing in person but I watched it live-streamed online. Chief Judge Smith (who Porter clerked for on the district court) attended.

I posted my reactions to Porter’s testimony as it happened on Twitter, and a link to the thread is here. As I summarized there, “my immediate reaction is that Porter acquitted himself superbly well and did everything he needed to do to assure his confirmation.”

The only surprise came when Porter explained that, although he had been listed as a leader of a state coalition formed to oppose Justice Sotomayor’s nomination, in fact his only involvement had been a 10- or 15-second phone call from a person calling from the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, during which he agreed to participate in a second call but ended up having no further involvement. He acknowledged that his name was listed as a leader of the group but said that was done without his authorization and he didn’t find out about it until 2014. JCN has now scrubbed its website of the materials in question. That’s all rather mind-blowing, but I don’t expect it to end up being a barrier to Porter’s confirmation.

Buzzfeed reporter Zoe Tillman was at the hearing, and her informative live-tweet thread is here.

I’ll update this post as news coverage of the hearing appears.

UPDATE: In the Legal Intelligencer, Ellis Kim has this story, headlined, “Third Circuit Nominee Downplays Political Past in Hearing.”

UPDATE2: A story by Tracie Mauriello from the June 12 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, headlined, “Even founders appear unaware of group at center of judicial nomination controversy,” featuring quotes from others listed as founders of the PA anti-Sotomayor group.