by Kevin Daley

An ally of liberal financier George Soros and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta had multiple conversations concerning a replacement for late Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court, new emails released by WikiLeaks show.

The candidate who was discussed is something of an unconventional choice.

Chris Stone, president of the Open Society Foundations (OSF) — a network of foundations and projects founded and chaired by Soros — emailed Podesta mere hours after Scalia died Feb. 13 to discuss a potential successor. Before joining OSF, Stone was a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and received accolades from Her Majesty’s government for his work in criminal justice reform in the United Kingdom.

“Remember our discussion of Wallace Jefferson, Chief Justice in Texas?” Stone wrote, under the subject line Scalia replacement.

“Yup,” Podesta replied.

Should the ambiguous message be read to indicate Stone and Podesta view Jefferson positively, their consideration is surprising. Jefferson is a Republican who served as chief justice of the deeply conservative Texas Supreme Court until 2013. He has since returned to private practice. Though Jefferson tacked a more moderate course as compared to his colleagues, he was a generally pro-business jurist (though the law has a business tilt in Texas, so this may so more about the law than the judge.) (RELATED: McCain Says GOP Senate Will Block Hillary’s SCOTUS Nominees)

Nonetheless, he attracted admirers among liberals for his reform efforts during his tenure. He received a commendation from the Anti Defamation League for his work to improve the quantity and quality of legal assistance available to the indigent, a cause in which he has been intimately involved for years. He also has the excoriated judicial selection process in Texas, which he sees as a shamelessly partisan affair. He consistently enjoyed the support of most professional lawyers organizations during his political life.

Jefferson’s personal narrative is compelling. He is the descendant of slaves (his great-grandparents were owned by a judge in Waco) and is the first black man to serve on the state’s highest court.

Though he would be an irregular choice for a Democratic president — liberals would certainly chafe at a missed opportunity to elevate a Paul Watford or Nina Pillard — Jefferson’s credentials and judicial record are such that even strident conservatives would struggle to oppose him.

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