Bret Kavanaugh Is A First Rate Hypocrite and Political Judge - By Josh Marshall

[DonViejo]

By Josh Marshall | August 20, 2018 12:21 pm

The Washington Post just published the full text of a memo Bret Kavanaugh wrote in August 1998 about questioning then-President Clinton as the country hurtled toward impeachment. Most attention will focus on the list of sexually explicit questions he suggested asking the president when he was interviewed by the Independent Counsel’s Office. You can see those here. To me though, those are not the most telling. It’s what comes before the sex questions.

Here’s the portion of the memo in which Kavanaugh argues against cutting President Clinton any “slack”.



This is clearly the voice of someone who simply hated President Clinton. That’s not terribly surprising. The Starr investigation was stocked with GOP partisans. It was a thoroughly corrupt operation. On other hand, this was twenty years ago. Kavanaugh was in his early 30s at the time. He’s in his early 50s now. To paraphrase the awkward exculpations of the late Henry Hyde, youthful indiscretions.

But that doesn’t add up. For his entire career as a DC lawyer, Kavanaugh has stood for maximal presidential power. This is not necessarily illegitimate in itself. There’s a range of opinion about the power that the President has vis a vis the other branches of the government. There is also a range of opinion about how much criminal prosecution is the answer to a law-breaking President as opposed to Congress and its impeachment power. But Kavanaugh has always been on the extreme side of presidential power.

Indeed, remember those comments that were reported last month, in which he said that U.S. v Nixon, the unanimously decided decision which forced Nixon to hand over his White House recordings may have been wrongly decided?

Well, those comments were published in early 1999, about a symposium that had happened a few months earlier. In other words, those comments in favor of maximal Presidential power were made almost contemporaneous with that memo, which he wrote in August 1998.

More recent comments in favor or extreme presidential power have been portrayed as a ‘change of heart’ for Kavanaugh. The evidence doesn’t back up that interpretation. For his whole career, Kavanaugh has believed in maximal presidential power. Unless it’s a Democrat, unless it’s a president he opposes.

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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/bret-kavanaugh-is-a-first-rate-hypocrite-and-political-judge

[dalton99a]

1. Kavanaugh's legal doctrine: "Maximal presidential power unless it's a Democrat."

Typical right-wing lackey

[Tommy_Carcetti]

2. Fact of the matter was, President Clinton did his best not to let the SC investigation against him..

....not to interfere with the daily business of the country.

Starr was appointed in 1994, supposedly to investigate the Whitewater matter. Things did not come to a head until February 1999 where President Clinton was acquitted in the impeachment proceedings. For the vast majority of that time, the nation went about its business. The economy thrived, we dealt with foreign matters such as the crisis in the Balkans, President Clinton ran for re-election and won, and other day to day activities. We didn't become preoccupied with the investigation until rumors of the Lewinsky affair broke in January 1998.

During that five year period, President Clinton never threatened the integrity of the investigation or threatened to fire Starr, even as the investigation meandered aimlessly from contrived scandal to contrived scandal before settling on arguably the most frivolous basis to seek impeachment of a president ever.