Photo: MANDEL NGAN / AFP
As the Senate voted toconfirm her nominationto the Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon,Ketanji Brown Jacksonwas with the man who helped her make history: PresidentJoe Biden.
“Overjoyed is probably an understatement,” Minyon Moore, an adviser assisting Jackson through the process of getting confirmed, told PEOPLE of the mood at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
“We are excited and overwhelmed, because we worked so hard to get to this day,” Moore said in an interview on Thursday, not long after the vote. “And it’s a great day. Even though it’s dreary here in Washington, the sun is shining through all the dreariness because we are happy.”
Amid all the excitement, Moore says Jackson was incredulous that her time had come after a months-long process that began even before Bidenpublicly selected herin February to be the nominee.
From left: President Joe Biden and Ketanji Brown Jackson celebrate her confirmation to the Supreme Court on Thursday at the White House.MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty
“She’s a very, very humble person,” Moore says. “In many ways you saw in her face, ‘I don’t believe this is happening.’ You felt that sense of energy … She’s still pinching herself in that this moment is actually her moment.”
Moore calls the period of intense preparation, which included meeting with 95 of the 100 senators — and facing sometimes stiff scrutiny over her record as a defense attorney and trial judge — “the most grueling process I’ve ever seen in one person.”
“Plus, she was still being a mother, a wife and a judge,” Moore adds of Jackson. “She rose to every occasion. She was here at the White House almost every day and I can’t tell you anything that she did not do. At a certain point, I even said to myself, ‘Oh my God, how is she taking this? How much more does she have to do?’ "
But Moore says Jackson was made for it.
“Preparation must have been her friend because she was completely prepared,” she says. “But you also must understand, she is a person of deep, deep, deep intellect. You sometimes wonder how does a person have the capacity to store so much information?”
Josh Brasted/FilmMagic
There is more work ahead for Jackson as she gets ready to take her Supreme Court seat — no easy task itself,according to Justice Amy Coney Barrett— but she has time to breathe before she’s expected to take the oath of office this summer once retiring Justice Stephen Breyer wraps up the current term.
That presidential pic, according to Moore, was likely Biden’s idea (it was also posted to his official Twitter) and was an “organic” moment that “just kind of happened.”
Joe Biden/Twitter
Phones were passed around for other reasons, too. Jackson’s husband, Dr. Patrick Jackson, couldn’t be there with his wife on Thursday because he was in surgery — instead, he received a phone call from the president, Moore says.
“It was so lovely to see how he was how she was smiling as [Biden] was talking to Dr. Jackson,” Moore says, adding that the president and Jackson were reading texts from her two daughters as the votes rolled in.
The support of Judge Jackson’s family “is everything to her,” Moore says. “They were there just to rally her and to boost her.” That includes her daughter Leila, who was photographed beaming at her mother in awidely seen image from the hearings.
Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times
It also includes a coalition of support that Moore helped build, and the team — which she called the “SCOTUS family” — that shepherded the nominee through the confirmation process and across the finish line.
Jackson made it easy, according to Moore, who says, “She really is just a person that you can love and embrace.”
During the selection process, Moore says, the president made it clear that broad affection for a nominee was critical because it can indicate not only the kind of support she will have but is also an extension of the person under consideration, her work and how she’s lived.
“We’re not just looking at the person. We’re looking at the community,” Moore says. “We’re looking at her church. We’re looking at the family.”
Asked what the president told Jackson inside the Roosevelt Room on Thursday, Moore revealed to PEOPLE, “He said he was proud of her. He was proud of how she handled the hearings. You could just see that he was just simply very, very proud.”
source: people.com
