A Florida state judge sided with President Donald Trump in a high profile free speech case while simultaneously lobbying for a federal judicial nomination from the president, newly disclosed Senate records show.
Trump nominated Ed Artau in May to serve as a district court judge in Florida, three months after Artau ruled in the president’s favor in his case against the Pulitzer Prize Board.
It has now has emerged that Artau was meeting with staff for Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott about securing the nomination from Trump before he issued the ruling as part of a three-judge appeals court panel in February, Politico reported.
Artau’s decision in the case allowed Trump’s defamation suit against the Pulitzer board to proceed and called for the overturning of a major Supreme Court case that makes it harder for public officials to sue the media.
Just two weeks later, Artau interviewed with the White House Counsel’s Office. In May, he met with Trump, who promptly announced Artau’s nomination to the federal bench in a Truth Social post.
“Ed has a GREAT track record of restoring LAW AND ORDER and, most importantly, Common Sense (which is, sadly, rare these days!),” Trump wrote.
The overlap between Artau’s decision in Trump’s case against the Pulitzer board and his behind-the-scenes push for a federal judgeship has set off ethics concerns, with Caroline Ciccone, president of watchdog group Accountable.US, telling Politico the timeline “raises serious questions about his impartiality.”
Artau, who has served on the Florida appeals court since his 2020 appointment by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, met with Scott’s general counsel on Nov. 14, just days after Trump was elected president, to discuss his interest in a seat on the district court.
According to the disclosure, Artau also reached out to Florida Republican Sen. Ashley Moody, and both senators later recommended him to the White House for consideration.
On Feb. 12, he handed Trump the win in his case against the Pulitzer board, and on Feb. 27, Artau interviewed at the White House.
Harrison Fields, a White House spokesperson defended Trump’s nomination of Artau—now awaiting Senate confirmation—in a statement to Politico.
“The standards of the President’s judicial nominations are simple: restoring law and order, ending the weaponization of the judicial branch, and interpreting the Constitution as written,” Fields said. “Ed Artau has demonstrated these principles throughout his esteemed career and will continue to do so as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.”
Trump sued the Pulitzer board after it refused to take back its 2018 awards given to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their reporting on Russian election interference in the 2016 election.
In his opinion in the case, Artau went out of his way to call for the Supreme Court to reconsider New York Times Company v. Sullivan, a landmark First Amendment decision that require public figures to prove “actual malice” to win a libel case against a news outlet.
