White House pushes back against claim Barrett should have divulged connection to anti-abortion ad

The White House is pushing back against the notion that Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett  acted inappropriately by not disclosing the inclusion of her name in a 2006 newspaper advertisement which expressed opposition to abortion and the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion ruling.

Barrett did not divulge the inclusion of her name in the ad in filings submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to reports.

NBC News reported that a couple of unnamed Democratic committee aides had confirmed that Barrett did not mention the ad in the Senate forms, though they claimed that Barrett should have mentioned it when answering a section about citations for “books, articles, reports, letters to the editor, editorial pieces or other published material you have written or edited.”

The outlet reported that one of the unidentified aides noted that Barrett also did not divulge her association with the ad within forms pertaining to a 2017 appeals court appointment.

White House Senior Communications Adviser Ben Williamson contested the concept that Barrett had done anything wrong.

"The Committee's questionnaire requires disclosure of material that a candidate has 'written or edited.' Judge Barrett neither wrote nor edited the ad in question," Williamson noted in a tweet. "This reporter's (and Dem aides') suggestion that ACB did something improper on her questionnaire is false."