Justice Kavanaugh should not be on the Supreme Court because he lied under oath!

Brett Kavanaugh is a serial liar. Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times written by Jackie Calmes. 

The American Bar Association had concerns about Kavanaugh 12 years ago. Republicans dismissed those facts, too. Pictured with side by side with Christine Margaret Blasey Ford, American professor of psychology at Palo Alto University and a research psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine.  Ford’s allegation that Judge Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her some 36 years ago, a charge he vigorously denies.

It’s jarring to write that about anyone, let alone a life-tenured justice on the Supreme Court. Yet years of evidence throughout Kavanaugh’s career show it’s a fact.

And that fact, together with recent years’ confirmation controversies and Clarence Thomas’ ethical lapses, is central to understanding why public confidence in the court has dropped precipitously. And that was before the last week’s string of unpopular, precedent-defying decisions against abortion, gun controls and the wall between church and state.

Worse for Kavanaugh, the criticism of his credibility is bipartisan. In the latest blow, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a fellow Republican whose vote was decisive when the Senate confirmed Kavanaugh four years ago, has doubled-down on her contention that he “misled” her when he reassured her that, if confirmed, he would not support overturning the court’s half-century-old abortion rights precedent, Roe vs. Wade.

The ever-cautious Senator Susan Collins would never say “lie.” Yet the New York Times obtained proof of just that, clearly from the senator’s office, publishing “contemporaneous notes” kept by those who sat in on Collins’ private meeting with then-nominee Kavanaugh in 2018. According to the notes, Collins pressed him hard about Roe.

Kavanaugh told her: “Start with my record, my respect for precedent, my belief that it is rooted in the Constitution, and my commitment and its importance to the rule of law. I understand precedent and I understand the importance of overturning it.”

“Roe is 45 years old, it has been reaffirmed many times, lots of people care about it a great deal, and I’ve tried to demonstrate I understand real-world consequences,” he said, and then added, “I am a don’t-rock-the-boat kind of judge.”

Now, hearing that, wouldn’t you believe that Kavanaugh would vote to uphold Roe?

The credulous Collins did, or claimed to. People in both parties, however, those who are pro-abortion rights and anti-, did not believe him. Nor did I. That had much to do with Kavanaugh's record as a mendacious political operative.

Kavanaugh’s credibility was widely in doubt long before the he-said, she-said allegations of sexual assault that convulsed the country during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings and nearly killed his nomination. He denied the credible accusations of an assault in high school from Christine Blasey Ford and two reported attacks at Yale, one alleged by classmate Debbie Ramirez and another that Senate Republicans bottled up, for which there was a reputable eyewitness. And Kavanaugh also denied that he ever was a blackout drunk, though numerous Yale classmates came forward to attest, under oath, that he was.

In Washington after law school, Kavanaugh quickly became familiar to Democrats as the partisan protégé of Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who investigated Bill and Hillary Clinton in the 1990s. Investigators’ documents from that time, now at the National Archives, show Kavanaugh sought evidence that Clinton aide Vince Foster was murdered — pandering to conspiracists on the right — years after he told colleagues that he believed Foster had committed suicide, just as prior investigations had concluded. Kavanaugh also was widely suspected of leaking anti-Clinton information from a grand jury, though he denied it.

When his next boss, then-President George W. Bush, nominated Kavanaugh to the prestigious D.C. Court of Appeals in 2003, Democratic senators blocked his confirmation for three years, until 2006. They were convinced he lied to them during the confirmation process by denying involvement in several White House controversies: policies allowing warrantless surveillance after Sept. 11,  and the torture of terrorism suspects, and the selection and promotion of Bush’s most right-wing judicial nominees. (Maine Writer.....ahhhh! I finally have a better understanding about the reason why Kavanaugh was supported by Bush.) 

Kavanaugh also denied any complicity in a Senate scandal — “Memogate” — involving a Republican aide who’d surreptitiously copied thousands of Democrats’ emails from 2001 through 2003 and shared them with Bush advisors.

Democrats had no proof to the contrary in the mid-aughts, but at the time of Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing in 2018, they got some. Republicans, then the Senate majority, grudgingly released Bush White House emails that contradicted Kavanaugh on his role in the controversies he’d been asked about in the prior decade.

Most damning were the Memogate emails: Many of the emails forwarding Democrats’ purloined messages listed Kavanaugh as a recipient, often the only one. Yet in 2004, when Democratic Sen. Charles E. Schumer asked Kavanaugh whether he‘d received “memos from internal files of any Democratic members,” Kavanaugh under oath said, “No.” Another time, he testified, “I’m not aware of the memos.”

Confronted with contrary evidence in 2018, Kavanaugh conceded receiving the emails but said he’d figured the Republican Senate aide got them from Democrats in the normal give-and-take among staffers.

As if.😑

What Democratic aide would provide a Republican staffer with the specific questions that Democratic Sen. Patrick J. Leahy planned to ask a Republican judicial nominee at a hearing? Or a 4,000-word Democratic strategy memo? Or an email containing damaging information about a Republican nominee marked for Democrats only? (On the last one, Kavanaugh replied to the Republican aide within minutes, giving him rebuttal talking points for GOP senators.)

Still Kavanaugh testified that the messages never raised “red flags” about their provenance. “Judge, I was born at night,” an exasperated Leahy snapped, “but not last night.”

After Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. sent scores of ethics complaints about him from lawyers, law professors and others to an appeals court council for review. Most were about his alleged lying under oath. The council soon dismissed them as moot: While the allegations were “serious,” the council said, justices aren’t subject to judicial ethics rules.

And that helps explain how liars end up on the nation’s highest court, for life, to determine how the rest of us live our lives.

@jackiekcalmes

Brett Kavanaugh and lack of judicial temperament - PBSNewsHour

Transcript from the Public Broadcasting PBSNewsHour with Judy Woodruff, an interview with Amna Nawaz and two expert women who helped to provide perspective about the September 27, 2018, Judge Brett Kavanaugh interview with the US Senate Judiciary Committee.

According to the American Bar Association (ABA), judicial temperament means that a judge exhibits "compassion, decisiveness, open-mindedness, sensitivity, courtesy, patience, freedom from bias and commitment to equal justice."

AMNA NAWAZ:
In key moments this week (Judiciary Committee interviews with Judge Brett Kavanaugh), it was the tone that mattered.

Amna Nawaz is National Correspondent and substitute anchor for PBS NewsHour since April 2018.

Aside from the specifics of the sexual assault allegations (described by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford), there were questions about Ford's composure when compared to Kavanaugh's anger and if the same rules applied to both witnesses.

The overt politics of the hearing were also a departure from precedent.

Here to help make sense of it all, Marcia Coyle of "The National Law Journal," and Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University.

Welcome to you both.

Marcia Coyle, I would like to start with you.

You have watched a lot of confirmation processes, tracked them over the years. A lot has been said about the demeanor of Judge Kavanaugh yesterday. Have you ever seen someone deliver speech, remarks, a response in a similar demeanor in past years?

MARCIA COYLE:
Amna, I think the closest that I have seen come to Judge Kavanaugh was Justice Clarence Thomas, when he went before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991.

I was thinking last night as I was watching Judge Kavanaugh of the old cliche that the best offense — or the best defense is a good offense. And Justice Clarence Thomas in '91, he spoke first, before Anita Hill, and then he was given rebuttal time. And on his rebuttal time, he came out with the now — the phrase that has lingered in so many memories of that period, in which he called the confirmation process a national disgrace, but a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.

And at that moment, you could tell that the atmosphere in the room and on the committee had changed.

Last night, with Judge Kavanaugh, he didn't have race to use like Clarence Thomas did, but what he did have was partisanship. And he — his emotional, angry, often belligerent delivery focused on what he felt was a conspiracy on the left to search and destroy him. And he said that he saw this as revenge for the 2016 presidential election, his own ideology, and the work he did for the independent counsel who had investigated the Clinton White House. So this was being done on behalf of the Clintons.

It was such a stark partisan kind of attack. And it is something that I have never seen before, not from a judicial nominee.

AMNA NAWAZ:
Deborah Tannen, I would love to get your take on this.

Now, you study language and how people use it, how it is perceived. Belligerent, angry, these were a lot of the words that were used to describe the way in which Judge Kavanaugh defended himself.

How are you, as someone who studies this from an academic viewpoint, taking in what you saw yesterday?

DEBORAH TANNEN:
I would add to that so many aspects of his self-presentation that were completely out of place in that context.

He was interrupting the senators. He was disrespectful to the senators, the Democratic senators. He turned the question back on them. I like beer. Do you like beer? What do you like to drink?

The interruptions, the overlap, supporting along with them when he was supposed to answer a question, he really never answered the questions. But he never said, I'm not — sorry, I can answer your question. He certainly didn't say sorry about anything, but simply took the floor and went on repeating the things that he had said with his opening statement.

And the contrast with Dr. Ford was really quite striking. She apologized when she had nothing to apologize for. And, by the way, I would point out that, for women, I don't think that really is an apology. It's just a way of being — taking into account the effect of what you're saying on the other person, so trying to be helpful.

So, it's pretty routinized, women saying, I'm sorry. But you — and we did once hear Judge Kavanaugh apologize, to Senator Klobuchar. But it was after a recess. And you kind of had the feeling that maybe somebody pointed out to him he had gone a bit too far.

AMNA NAWAZ:
Let me ask you about something you just mentioned, the difference between the two testimonies.

This is something we have heard a lot today. Was there a gender dynamic at play? Or were we just watching two different personalities make their cases?

DEBORAH TANNEN:
Yes, of course.

It was almost like stereotypical representations of how women and men would be expected to present themselves and to behave. So, he was blustery. He was taking up as much talk space as possible. The anger is an emotion that is approved of in men and is often seen as positive in men.

She could not be angry. She had many — much reason to be, but she didn't show anger. And it would be very unacceptable for a woman to show anger.

So, everything about her self-presentation was self-effacing, deferential. What's interesting is that most people, men, as well as women, would be deferential to the senators in a setting like that.

He threw all that to the winds, and was actually not — not only fulfilling our expectations of men, but not fulfilling our expectations of a person who was presenting himself before a body that was going to judge him. He was acting more like he was the judge.

AMNA NAWAZ:
I would like to ask Marcia Coyle about the impact of that, because, as we know, this is part of an interview process, an assessment process, for a very big, important job.

I want to show a graphic now that talks a little bit and shows quite clearly sort of the partisan nature of this process over the years. This is starting with John Paul Stevens in 1975, showing the Senate confirmation votes. Started back then a 98-0 vote. You see those margins growing tighter and tighter each year, until Justice Neil Gorsuch's vote last year. That was 54-45.

Marcia, you mentioned this earlier, of course, the partisan nature of that vote. But Judge Kavanaugh himself delving into that partisan conversation, does that impact, do you think, how he does his job moving forward?

MARCIA COYLE:
Oh, moving forward?

Well, I think only he can — if he is confirmed, he's the only one who will be able to tell if he brings — if he takes on to the court a bitterness, an anger towards any groups on the left, any parties on the left that would come before him.

I can't answer that for him. I think, in terms of the court itself, that I'm — I think most of the justices know Judge Kavanaugh, like him, respect him. They have hired many of his former clerks for their own chambers.

But I have to believe that there was a certain amount of cringing going on last night. I was thinking — she didn't say this in the context of the nomination hearings, but Judge Kagan recently said in a public conversation that the court — the court relies on — for its legitimacy that the American people believe that its decisions are made with a certain amount of integrity.

So, any time there is a partisan cast to any cases that come to the court, they worry about this. And they worry that they will be viewed as a partisan institution.

Now, I'm sure many people probably believe the court practices politics, not law. But, as she said, you have to look at the institution. And the American people do respect it because they still do believe that there is a certain amount of integrity in the decision-making.

I think probably Justice — Judge Kavanaugh's comments last night, as well as his appearance on FOX television, which is associated with a certain political view, probably is a little worrisome in terms of how some people will view him if he is confirmed.

AMNA NAWAZ:
And we will see if he is, indeed.

Marcia Coyle, Deborah Tannen, thank you very much for your time.

MARCIA COYLE:
Pleasure.