Biden once again nominates Cleaver’s son-in-law to federal bench. This time for a lower court

When President Joe Biden renominated a slate of judges who failed to get confirmed by the U.S. Senate before the end of last Congress, three judges didn’t make the list.

One of them was Jabari Wamble, a prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas and the son-in-law of Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat and early Biden supporter. In August, Wamble was nominated to serve as a judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, but his nomination never made it out of the Judiciary Committee.

The White House announced on Wednesday it would once again nominate Wamble — but for a lower court.

Wamble was nominated to serve as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, a step down from the Circuit Court. It is unclear who Biden is nominating to serve in the vacant seat for the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The President is proud to put Jabari Wamble forward, and believes he would be a wonderful addition to the federal bench in Kansas,” a White House spokesman said. “He has extensive experience as a prosecutor, including more than a decade of experience in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas. After further consideration and conversation with Mr. Wamble regarding his own interests and experience, he has been nominated to fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas.”

His nomination comes after more than a month of silence by the White House and Kansas’ senators about why Wamble wasn’t renominated to the circuit court.

The American Bar Association, which typically rates judicial nominees, never issued a rating for Wamble in 2022 and has not done so in 2023.

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said it was “unclear” why Wamble was not renominated, when the reason for the other two judicial candidates who were not renominated were clear — Republican Sen. Ron Johnson didn’t approve of a nominee in his home state of Wisconsin and a presumed vacancy in New York was rescinded.

In January, Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, said he didn’t know why Wamble wasn’t renominated and wouldn’t commit to turning in his blue slip — the process in which a state’s senator can approve or disapprove of a judicial nominee — on Wamble if he was renominated.

“I think we’re gonna kinda waiting on, is that the American Bar, that someone vets them, their organization,” Marshall said. “We’ll be curious to see what they do here in the next several weeks.”

Cleaver, too, was reluctant to talk about the nomination in January.

“I think the only thing they would say is the White House thinks very highly of Jabari Wamble,” Cleaver said when told the White House wouldn’t comment.

Wamble has served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas since 2011. He previously worked in the office of Kansas Attorney General Stephen Six, a Democrat who held the office from 2008 to 2011. He also worked in the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office and graduated from the University of Kansas for his undergraduate and law degrees.

He’s married to Marissa Cleaver, one of the Kansas City congressman’s four children. The elder Cleaver was an early supporter of Biden’s 2020 presidential bid.

Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, spoke highly of Wamble after his first nomination, calling him a “dedicated public servant.”

“Congratulations to Jabari Wamble on his nomination to the Federal bench,” Moran said at the time. “Mr. Wamble has demonstrated legal skill and interest in justice throughout his professional career.”