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Article snippet: WASHINGTON — One of President Trump’s federal judge nominees has withdrawn after he was unable to answer basic questions during his confirmation hearing about the courtroom process, showed little familiarity with federal trial rules and acknowledged that he had never prosecuted or defended a case. A clip of the exchange between the nominee, Matthew Petersen, and Senator John N. Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, became a viral sensation and drew ridicule across the internet. Mr. Petersen’s withdrawal over the weekend was the third nomination by Mr. Trump to collapse in recent days. Last week, the White House pulled back two other Federal District Court nominees who had attracted controversy, Jeff Mateer and Brett Talley. Mr. Talley also had scant trial experience and apparently defended the early Ku Klux Klan under a pseudonym on a sports website. Mr. Mateer once described transgender children as proof of “Satan’s plan.” The departures were an embarrassment for the White House, which was responsible for vetting the prospective jurists, at the end of what has otherwise been a year of success on judicial nominations for Mr. Trump. He has rapidly begun reshaping higher levels of the federal bench by appointing deeply conservative judges. Following a strategy outlined by Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, Mr. Trump and the Republican majority in the Senate moved swiftly to install Justice Neil M. Gorsuch in a vacant Supreme Court seat and then appointed a d... Link to the full article to read more