Confederate Leader's Portrait Was on Trump Court Nominee's Wall

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump's pick for a federal judgeship in Alabama defended his decision to hang a portrait on his chamber wall of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, citing its “historical significance.”

"I absolutely reject racism in all its forms," Liles Burke, the nominee for U.S. district judge for the Northern District of Alabama, said Wednesday at a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The reason that I hung that really has nothing to do with race and everything to do with its historical significance."

The presence and removal of Confederate war monuments has caused controversy as some consider them reminders of slavery.

Burke said the portrait of Davis in his later years was on his wall from 2011 to 2012 and has since been followed by pictures of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Booker T. Washington, among others. He said a court archivist found it and suggested hanging it.

To contact the reporter on this story: Terrence Dopp in Washington at tdopp@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Justin Blum, Laurie Asséo