WASHINGTON _ Donald Trump's reported list of more potential Supreme Court picks includes Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah _ who has been critical of the GOP presidential nominee and declined to endorse him.
Lee's office was quick to cross his name off Trump's list, first reported Friday by NBC News.
"Trump did not speak to Lee about this," a Lee spokesman, Conn Carroll, said in an email response to questions. "Sen. Lee already has the job he wants which is why he is campaigning to represent the great people of Utah again this year."
Carroll added: "Sen. Lee has not endorsed Trump and has no plans to do so."
Trump's inclusion of Lee is a bit of a head scratcher even if the Utah Republican has conservative legal bona fides. His father, Rex Lee, was a solicitor general during the Reagan administration.
The senator, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, remains a regular visitor to the Supreme Court and is eager to talk about constitutional law. He is on the November ballot in Utah for a second Senate term.
But Lee ripped Trump in a telephone interview in June for accusing the father of his best friend _ Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas _ of conspiring to kill John F. Kennedy and of being intolerant toward religious minorities. Lee is Mormon.
"We can go through the fact that he's made statements that some have identified correctly as religiously intolerant," Lee said on the Steve Malzberg Show on NewsMaxTV. "We can get into the fact that he's wildly unpopular in my state, in part because my state consists of people who are members of a religious minority church."
Also on Trump's reported list of nine names was Florida Supreme Court Justice Charles Canady, a Republican member of the House from 1993 to 2001 who helped manage impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton.
The names reported Friday get added to the list of 11 names Trump released as potential Supreme Court picks in July, which included Sen. Lee's brother, Thomas, a Utah Supreme Court justice.
Trump has repeatedly said in stump speeches that preventing liberal justices from being appointed to the Supreme Court is a reason conservatives should vote for him.
"The Supreme Court justices that I told you about before, I mean, if they put certain people onto the Supreme Court, our country is going to be a whole different country," Trump said Sept. 15 at The Economic Club of New York. "We're going to be a large-scale version of Venezuela. We're going to be a totally different deal."
