WASHINGTON A Black former U.S. appeals court judge appointed by President George W. Bush privately reached out to Senate leaders this month to urge them to confirm President Joe Bidens Muslim judicial pick Adeel Mangi, saying he is deeply disturbed by the GOPs ugly and baseless attacks on him.

In a letter obtained by HuffPost and sent last week to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), former federal judge Timothy Lewis said he felt compelled to reach out because of how badly Mangi has been treated in his confirmation process compared to what Lewis experienced in his.

I have been deeply disturbed by the unfounded and disturbing attacks against Adeel Mangi, and I strongly support his nomination, said Lewis.

This is a nominee who should and ordinarily would have widespread bipartisan support, he said. Instead, he is being subjected to attacks against his character. His accusers claim he supports terrorism and is anti-Semitic. Those allegations are absolutely unfounded.

The letter comes as Democratic support for Mangi who would be the first-ever Muslim appeals court judge if confirmed appears to be shaky amid a wave of misleading and Islamophobic attacks from Republicans .

Some Senate Democratic aides told HuffPost on Friday they werent sure if he had the votes to get confirmed.

I think it will be very tough at this point, one aide, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about intra-party disputes, conceded.

Lewis was a judge for seven years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, the same court to which Mangi has been nominated. Like Mangi, he was a judicial nominee in a presidential election year, in 1992. And like Mangi, he was a historic pick. He was one of two Black judges nominated to an appeals court by Bush. The other was then-D.C. Circuit nominee Clarence Thomas.

Mangi is a 23-year civil litigator based in New Jersey. He was unanimously rated well-qualified by the American Bar Association and has been praised by a number of organizations, including the AFL-CIO , the Coalition of Underrepresented Law Enforcement Associations and more than a dozen Jewish groups , for both his legal and pro-bono work.

But for months, Mangi has been the target of blatantly Islamophobic attacks by Republican senators and right-wing groups like the Judicial Crisis Network. This group has run ads accusing Mangi of being a radical and an antisemite, and of being involved in an organizations efforts to teach students to hate Israel, to hate America and to support global terrorism. None of this is true.

I cannot help but contrast Mr. Mangis experience as a nominee with my own, Lewis said in his letter to Senate leaders. I was treated with respect not just by senators of the party of the president who nominated me, but also by the Democratic senators who held the majority. I was confirmed by unanimous consent less than a month before Election Day.

Lewis warned that a Senate rejection of Mangi would have a toxic long-term impact on the entire federal judiciary. He suggested that people from underrepresented communities are likely to think twice about accepting a judicial nomination if they believe they will be unfairly attacked and stereotyped in the way that Mangi has been.

It does not have to be this way, he said.

You can read Lewis full letter here:

Conservatives efforts to cast Mangi as antisemitic seemed to lose traction after Jewish groups rose up in his defense, so theyve pivoted to a new attack: painting him as an enemy of law enforcement. Judicial Crisis Network president Carrie Severino has been aggressively pushing a narrative that Mangi supports an anti-law enforcement group, the Alliance of Families for Justice, on whose advisory board he has served since 2019.

Severino and other Republicans are accusing Mangi of supporting the killing of police officers because Alliance of Families for Justice in 2021 advocated for the parole of aging Black Panther members like Mumia Abu-Jamal, who caught COVID-19 in prison and was at risk of dying. Abu-Jamal has been in prison since 1981 after being convicted of killing a police officer. (His conviction has been the subject of decades of scrutiny, and groups like Amnesty International have long argued he never got a fair trial and deserves a new one.)

The false narrative about Mangi has gotten so twisted that it bears no resemblance to what this organization does or what his connection is to it. AFJ is a nonprofit that offers counseling services to family members of people who have been incarcerated. It provides services like arranging care packages, making sure people have adequate visitation and providing housing reentry or legal support when people get out.

Mangis connection to it is very loose. In 2020, his law firm, Patterson Belknap, took on a wrongful death case referred by AFJ that involved a mentally ill inmate who was killed by a correctional officer. Mangi took the lead in the case and won, earning the inmates family the largest settlement in New York state history .

Given the huge success of this case, AFJ asked Mangi to join its advisory board. He joined, but never took another case from the group.

This is what has been distorted into accusations that Mangi supports cop-killers. GOP operatives have been lobbying law enforcement groups to publicly oppose Mangi on these grounds. Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), who was already incredibly offensive in his treatment of Mangi in his nomination hearing, are now amplifying these attacks.

But Cruz and other Senate Republicans are hoping nobody notices the hypocrisy in what theyre doing: virtually all of them voted twice to confirm judges appointed by President Donald Trump who previously did legal work directly on behalf of people convicted of killing police officers.

Senate Republicans overwhelmingly voted in 2018 to confirm Ryan Nelson to his current seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Nelson worked on a case, Dean v. United States, and said in his Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire that it was an honor to represent Marthell Dean in two consolidated appeals. Dean was convicted of murdering D.C. police officer Brian Gibson as Gibson sat in his patrol car.

Senate Republicans also overwhelmingly voted in 2019 to confirm Anuraag Singhal to his current seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Singhal represented Jeffrey Lee Weaver, who was charged with murdering Fort Lauderdale police officer Bryant Peney . News coverage of this case described Singhal crying as he argued in favor of life imprisonment for Weaver, rather than the death sentence.

I hope you can find some love in your heart for Jeff Weaver, Singhal said with tears in his eyes , and I hope youll let him die in prison.

Lewis decision to weigh in on Mangis nomination appears to be in response to the egregious distortions of his record. Its rare for federal judges, current or former, to get involved in another judicial nominees confirmation process.

He said as much in his letter to Schumer and McConnell: Mr. Mangi bears no resemblance whatsoever to the caricature being painted of him in some quarters.

Unfortunately, there is a constituency in this current politicized environment for such a smear campaign directed at someone who would become the first Muslim American ever to serve on a federal appellate court, Lewis said. But this is not a constituency whose fears and ignorance any United States senator should entertain, let alone advance.