Brett Kavanaugh - Revisited

I’ve never been a political animal, and never supported one party over another.  Two of my favorite modern Presidents are Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.  While radically different in some ways, both Presidents were sincere patriots who offered what they felt the country needed at the time.  And big majorities of voters agreed.  Donald Trump is totally different, however, and presents a number of very serious threats to the US, its system of government, and our way of life.  This is one of many commentaries on him and the dire situation we find ourselves in under his administration.

A distressing feature of the whole Trump saga is that we are bombarded on essentially a daily basis with terrible actions and comments.  So one day we learn about how Trump defrauded the US by falsely valuing hundreds of millions of dollars of his father's property.  My God - in any other time, that story would have been massive, and would likely have taken the President down.  But the very next day, another story breaks about how his people actually did talk to the Russians, followed the day after that by proof that he instructed his attorney to pay off porn stars.  Followed by giving the Saudi leader a pass on murdering a US reporter.  And on and on, day after day. 

We're overloaded - virtually every day, something that would bring down any other President!  And we forget.  A couple of months down the road, nobody even remembers how Trump defrauded the government, or any of that other stuff.  That's where historians come in.  They take things down for posterity, so people can remember, or learn, what happened.  I'm going to do that here, but just with one big issue to review in detail; something really important, where people have already forgotten much of what actually happened: the Brett Kavanaugh appointment. 

When people think of the whole affair surrounding Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination and confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice, they mostly remember the accusations about him sexually assaulting teenage girls, and how the Senate eventually didn’t believe those stories enough to derail his confirmation.  So he became a Supreme Court Justice for life.  Yet there is so much more to the story; so much to know that pretty clearly shows he had no right to take a seat on the Supreme Court.   

All of the reasons to deny him a place on the Court were readily available to the public, spread over many legitimate media sources, and hard to miss for anyone with their eyes and ears open to the facts.  Yet for a variety of reasons, most Americans are either unaware of them or chose to reject them as being partisan lies.  But facts are powerful things; you can ignore or deny them, but they still let us know the truth.  So let’s look at some facts about Brett Kavanaugh and his path to taking a seat on the Supreme Court.

We’ll start with was his earlier lying to the Senate, which is backed up by credible documentation.  As part of his testimony before the Senate for a US Appeals Court appointment in 2006, Kavanaugh lied about his role in handling the 2003 nomination of Charles Pickering for the Bush administration. https://newrepublic.com/minutes/150749/brett-kavanaugh-lie-us-senate.   In earlier testimony before the Senate (he was not confirmed in a 2004 attempt to get on the court), he also lied under oath – this time about documents he helped steal from the Democrats.  A September, 2018 article in Mother Jones documented this lie, along with four other occasions Kavanaugh lied under oath before the Senate.  https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/09/five-times-brett-kavanaugh-appears-to-have-lied-to-congress-while-under-oath/ 

Had they been known at the time, those lies would have kept him off of the Federal bench in 2006, which obviously would have kept him from being on the Supreme Court now.  He may still face impeachment and be thrown off the Court for those lies once the Democrats take control of the House, though that is far from certain.  Our overall takeaway here is that Brett Kavanaugh committed perjury on multiple occasions when under oath and therefore is inappropriate for any judgeship, let alone one on the highest court in the land. 

Then there are his earlier public statements in favor of more power for the Executive Branch, which is fine.  But part of that was his claim that the President should be exempt from all prosecution, and even investigation, for possible crimes.  This is extremely important given the current environment during his confirmation process, seeing as how the President who appointed him was the target of multiple criminal investigations at the time.  

Related to that is the fact that President Trump presented a list of qualified jurists from which he would choose his nominee to the Supreme Court by the spring of 2018.  At the time, the White House stated that this was a complete list of those under consideration, and that nobody else would be considered.  Kavanaugh’s name was not on that list.  But almost immediately after it became clear that Trump might face criminal prosecution, Kavanaugh’s name came out of clear air to land on the top of his list of finalists for the job, despite Trump being told he’d have a tough time getting Kavanaugh approved because of his “extensive paper trail.”  Rather obviously, Trump valued Kavanaugh’ probable “get out of jail free card” vote that made it worth him taking a big chance on him.  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/07/us/politics/trump-mcconnell-supreme-court.html

Also related was the way that Kavanaugh absolutely refused to answer questions at his Senate confirmation hearing about his views on the President being investigated or charged.  Time and time again, Senators asked him to comment on that, and each time he deflected their questions, responding with a reply that did not address the question.  Most outrageously, the final time he was pressed to comment on this critical issue, he merely sat quietly and looked straight forward, not saying a word for a good 10 or 15 seconds.  When the questioning Senator asked if he was refusing to answer the question, he merely continued to sit quietly, saying nothing.  This kind of insolent behavior alone should disqualify Kavanaugh from being named to the Court.

A large part of Kavanaugh’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee dealt with the sexual assault testimony of Dr. Ford and other women, which ultimately led to a hiatus while the FBI investigated those charges.  Yet the FBI’s hands were tied by the White House in terms of who they could interview, and the 5-day time frame was much less than the FBI normally would take in such an investigation.  The BBC, which surveys show is the most trusted news source in America, wrote about the investigation’s flaws, including the understatement that it was “incomplete.”  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45693211

Then there was Kavanaugh’s dramatic closing comments to the Senate hearing, as he railed against the Democrats and Hillary Clinton.  "This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups," a seething Kavanaugh said.   https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/408821-kavanaugh-says-hes-victim-of-revenge-on-behalf-of-the-clintons   Never before has a nominee made it clear that he favors one party or another; how can he be unbiased if cases regarding Democrats come before the court?

His outbursts and other behavior prompted a group of 2,400 law professors of all partisan views to write an open letter to the Senate urging that Kavanaugh not be confirmed for his behavior before that body.  “We are law professors who teach, research and write about the judicial institutions of this country. Many of us appear in state and federal court, and our work means that we will continue to do so, including before the United States Supreme Court. We regret that we feel compelled to write to you, our Senators, to provide our views that at the Senate hearings on Sept. 27, Judge Brett Kavanaugh displayed a lack of judicial temperament that would be disqualifying for any court, and certainly for elevation to the highest court of this land.”  

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/03/opinion/kavanaugh-law-professors-letter.html

And then there was Ford’s testimony itself, which President Donald Trump initially said was “compelling,” and came from “a very fine woman,” who was a “credible witness”  But then politics pushed aside the truth, as Trump soon started mocking Ford, “imitating her inability to remember some details about the evening she was assaulted.”  When asked later about how he could say such horrible things about her, after he obviously believed her story earlier, Trump characteristically responded: “It doesn’t matter.  We won.”  Trump let the truth come out.  Not the truth about Ford’s charges, but the truth about all that matters to him – winning, regardless of what lies and nasty accusations he must present to do so. 

Maybe Brett Kavanaugh will turn out to be the brilliant and fair jurist that he and his supporters say he is.  But given the hyper-partisan environment and his questionable background and confirmation hearing behavior, we have a right to feel that might not be the case.  With “compelling” testimony from a “credible witness”, on top of an “extensive paper trail” questioning his honesty, and a “lack of judicial temperament,” the American people voiced their overwhelming opinion that he not be confirmed by 41% in favor, 51% opposed.  https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/410458-poll-majority-oppose-kavanaughs-confirmation-to-supreme-court   This is yet one more example when a minority “base” of Trump supporters have forced their will on the nation, via Republican lawmakers afraid to face their wrath by doing the right thing.