A new report claims that a former communications director for former Vice President Kamala Harris developed a “death-pool roster” of Republican-appointed federal judges who could have sworn Harris in as president if former President Joe Bien died in office.
According to Fox News, the new report is documented in “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” which was written by NBC News journalist Jonathan Allen and The Hill journalist Amie Parnes and published on Tuesday by William Morrow and Company. The new book claims that the “death-pool roster” of judges was created by Jamal Simmons, who formerly worked as Harris’ White House communications director.
According to Allen and Parnes, Simmons was worried that if Biden died in office and Harris became president, many people would question the legitimacy of her presidency. The book claims that Simmons was especially worried that “Trump people” would go “apesh-t” if Harris was sworn in as president.
“Simmons believed Harris would be strengthened by an institutional stamp of approval if she were sworn in hurriedly because Biden had died unexpectedly,” the political journalists wrote. “Her legitimacy might be questioned, he worried, recalling the January 6 effort to stop Biden from being certified as president.”
“The strongest validator, he believed, would be a federal judge who had been appointed by a Republican other than Trump,” Allen and Parnes added. “He compiled a spreadsheet of those jurists across the country, down to a city-by-city breakdown, and carried it with him when he traveled with Harris.”
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According to Allen and Parnes’ book, Simmons claimed that he never informed Harris about the “death-pool roster” prior to leaving her communications team in January of 2023. However, Simmons told his colleagues that he “should be notified immediately if something happened to Biden” since he had developed an “entire communications strategy.” Simmons also left the “death-pool roster” spreadsheet with another one of Harris’ aides.
The Daily Mail reported that in addition to the “death-pool roster” of judges developed by Simmons, Democrat officials created other “contingency plans” ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
“A handful of Democratic National Committee officials already had considered contingency plans,” Allen and Parnes wrote. “In hush-hush talks starting in 2023, these officials gamed out Biden-withdrawal scenarios, according to two people familiar with them.”
Allen and Parnes explained that the Democratic National Committee Officials created the plans to ensure that the Democrat Pary was “ready for every possible circumstance: if Biden launched his campaign and then stepped aside before the primaries; if he won a bunch of primaries and then could not continue. If he secured enough delegates for winning the nomination but dropped out before winning a floor vote at the convention, and if he left a vacancy at the top of the ticket after taking the nomination.”
