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The Judiciary Committee is meeting Thursday morning to discuss the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, as well as a slew of other potential judges—three circuit and 17(!) district. The vote on Kavanaugh will be held over until next week, giving senators plenty of time to consider his answers, and more importantly non-answers, to their follow-up written questions.
Like a series of questions from Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) about Judge Alex Kozinski’s mistreatment and sexual harassment of at least 15 women who also clerked for him, for whom Kavanaugh also clerked. Coons asks if Kavanaugh ever saw Kozinski "mistreat" clerks. Kavanaugh responds to a series of four questions about Kozinski's treatment and inappropriate behavior with the qualifier "of a sexual nature" or answers an entirely different question.
Kavanaugh told senators he doesn't have a gambling problem, a question that arose because of his excessive debt related to buying baseball tickets. Kavanaugh insists "I have not had gambling debts or participated in 'fantasy' leagues." He explains that he has an old house and had to spend a lot of money on that, but he doesn't really answer how he managed to pay off that $200,000 in debt in a year's time.
He didn't answer the opportunity to expand his views on whether prosecuting or indicting a sitting president is constitutional, but reiterated that he believes the president has "prosecutorial discretion," as he expressed in a 2011 dissent on the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate. That's where he said "Under the Constitution, the President may decline to enforce a statute that regulates private individuals when the President deems the statute unconstitutional, even if a court has held or would hold the statute constitutional." So that's a pretty unitary executive, in his view: "the Supreme Court said this principle applies to civil enforcement as well. The limits of prosecutorial discretion are uncertain." He also refused to answer whether at "any point during the process that led to your nomination, did you have any discussions with anyone—including, but not limited to, individuals at the White House, at the Justice Department, or any outside groups—about President Trump’s position on loyalty?" He gave the same non-answer he provided in the hearings: "As I said at the hearing, I am an independent judge and am loyal to the Constitution. My answers to all questions posed by the senators were my own."
Most damning, he doubled down on his perjury, insisting that during his testimony last week that he had no idea he trafficked in stolen documents and that he had no idea about any of the illegal activities in the Bush White House while he was there, meaning he's either an amnesiac or a liar. "I truthfully answered numerous questions regarding Mr. Miranda [the document thief], and I refer you to those answers," he writes. "As I explained at the hearing last week, I testified accurately in 2006 that I did not learn about the Terrorist Surveillance Program, or TSP until I read about it in a New York Times article in December 2005. I was not read into that program."
Kavanaugh was no more forthcoming in his written responses, nor apparently more truthful, than he was in his testimony. This man is not fit to serve on the Supreme Court, no more fit than the unindicted co-conspirator in the Oval Office is to serve. Republicans insist on turning a blind eye to the destruction of our institutions they're furthering.