President Joe Biden’s nominee to a key State Department position has a history of political statements, according to a watchdog group.
According to a memo first shared with The Daily Wire from the American Accountability Foundation, Margaret L. Taylor, Biden’s pending nominee for State Department legal adviser, has repeatedly taken partisan positions in the past, including expressing effusive praise for California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.
“Margaret Taylor is a political hack who should not be anywhere near the State Department. Given her glowing praise of Adam Schiff’s unscrupulous and dishonest tactics, she has zero credibility to make sure Biden’s State Department is corruption free and in keeping with the law,” the AAF said in a statement to The Daily Wire. “Her comments raise concerns about her ability to faithfully serve in government without her political biases turning her into another Deep State partisan.”
Taylor was nominated to the position in April by Biden, but the Senate has yet to vote on her confirmation. She previously has been the general counsel for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a fellow for the Brookings Institution, and a senior editor at Lawfare.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP
The AAF, a watchdog formed in 2020, combed through Taylor’s writings and podcast appearances, compiling a list of her writings and podcast appearances that suggested a political bias.
In a 2019 New York Times opinion article, Taylor heaped praise on Schiff, who many Republicans have criticized over his claims about Russian collusion and former President Donald Trump.
“Mr. Schiff was vocal about his desire to tell the American people, in an open and public way, exactly what happened in the 2016 election. He also signaled he would seek to address wider issues, like the intersection of the president’s foreign policies and the Trump family’s global financial interests,” she wrote. “Mr. Schiff has become the Democrats’ go-to articulator of the importance of core American values like the rule of law, election integrity, respect for human rights and anti-corruption — as well as broader foreign policy challenges like the rise of authoritarianism around the world.”
In a June 2, 2020, co-written article for Lawfare following violent riots after the death of George Floyd, Taylor took aim at Trump and other Republican lawmakers who advocated for a stronger response to the unrest.
“With a president apparently bent on escalating tensions, the country needs a resolved legislative response. While there are plenty of members piling on divisive and escalatory rhetoric — Tom Cotton and Matt Gaetz being recent notable examples — there are nonetheless glimmers of hope for a constructive bipartisan response,” the article stated.
Prior to the 2020 election, Taylor suggested in a co-written article for Lawfare that Biden would be more likely to follow “political norms” than President Donald Trump.
“Given another four years, and with a new electoral mandate, Trump is likely to continue to press the outer bounds of interbranch political norms. President Biden, by contrast, may have a desire to restore such norms, though he may end up supporting the demolition of a big one — the Senate filibuster rule for legislation,” she wrote.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has yet to take up her nomination.