Ron Johnson opposes U.S. attorney nominee Sopen Shah in Madison over deleted tweets

Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said Tuesday that he won't support the nomination of Sopen Shah to be the U.S. attorney in the Western District of Wisconsin based in Madison.

Johnson said he's withdrawing support because of Shah's deleted tweets that he contended showed "she would be yet another political partisan within our justice system."

Shah, an attorney in the Madison office of Perkins Coie, could not be reached for comment. Her Twitter account appeared to be deleted.

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Johnson's refusal to turn in a so-called blue slip to the Senate Judiciary Committee could end up derailing the nomination.

In May 2021, Johnson and Baldwin, through a bipartisan nomination commission, recommended Shah and Diane Schlipper to fill the post. The White House announced Shah's nomination more than a year later.

In a lengthy statement, Johnson said: “With each passing day, it is becoming more obvious that we no longer have equal justice being administered in America. Instead, we have a two-tiered justice system — one that protects Democrats and their elite backers, and one for the rest of America. The reason we have a two-tiered system is because our justice system is increasingly populated with political partisans who are incapable of administering justice equally.

"Through tweets that she has now deleted, Ms. Sopen Shah demonstrated she would be yet another political partisan within our justice system. As a result, I will not support her nomination.”

Johnson spokeswoman Alexa Henning said the senator's office was not aware of Shah's tweets in May 2021 when the nomination was forwarded to the White House.

"Ms. Shah deleted her Twitter at some point, so we only recently learned about these tweets and once we did the senator expressed his opposition," Henning said.

Johnson's office made available to the Journal Sentinel 14 tweets flagged from Shah's Twitter account.

Some of the tweets or retweets were in reference to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Two tweets were critical of Johnson.

In one, Jan. 7, 2021, Shah quote tweeted a report that Johnson claimed that neither he nor fellow objectors nor then-President Donald Trump bore responsibility for the violence at the Capitol.

"Wisconsin will teach him a thing or two about accountability come 2022 ..." Shah tweeted.

In another, on Feb. 12, 2021, she responded directly to Johnson's own tweet voicing support for Trump's lawyers in the second impeachment trial.

"I am 110% confident that @SenRonJohnson does not know how law works," she tweeted.

On Feb. 28, 2021, Shah responded to a tweet about Ted Cruz taking his family to Cancun while Texas faced a power grid crisis during a cold snap: "Can I just add that I’m so sick of Republican senators and congressmen using the women and girls in their families as scapegoats to avoid/deflect responsibility? Ugh. What an ugly look."

On Dec. 14, 2020, Shah responded to a tweet from prominent Democratic attorney Marc Elias noting the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected a Trump appeal of his recount loss. "I'm back on Twitter after eight(!) years away for this. Every seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court counts."

This isn't the first time Wisconsin senators have moved against those who were initially nominated through the bipartisan commission.

In 2018, Baldwin blocked Trump nominee Gordon Giampietro for federal judge in Wisconsin's Eastern District. In February, Johnson said he was blocking President Joe Biden's nomination of William Pocan to the federal bench in Green Bay.

Baldwin criticized Johnson's move.

“Sopen Shah is extremely well qualified to serve as U.S. Attorney and she received support from our bipartisan Wisconsin Federal Nominating Commission," Baldwin said.

"Senator Johnson is disrespecting the work of our Nominating Commission and abusing the Senate’s Blue Slip process to play his own personal politics about the 2020 election that Trump lost.”

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ron Johnson opposes U.S. attorney nominee over deleted tweets