There are almost as many lists of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s lies under oath as there were lies. Here, for example, is an annotated list of 31 such lies from Medium. But an area that most cataloguers missed was lies about his record on the environment.
In his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, Kavanaugh implied he has been balanced, saying, "In some cases, I've ruled against environmentalists' interests, and in many cases I've ruled for environmentalists' interests."
That’s bunk.
Sharon Lerner at The Intercept writes:
When testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 5, Kavanaugh listed several cases in which he upheld environmental regulations, including “the Natural Resources Defense Council case versus EPA, a ruling for environmentalist groups,” as he put it.
Yet, in that case, which was decided by the D.C. Court of Appeals in 2014, Kavanaugh ruled against three of four challenges brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club. The judge rejected the environmental groups’ primary argument that the Environmental Protection Agency’s limits on lead, arsenic, chromium, and soot pollution from cement plants were too weak. He also rejected another legal challenge the groups posed to the EPA’s pollution limits. And Kavanaugh’s ruling also sided with industry in giving cement companies a two-year extension to pollute above the limits that the environmental groups already felt were too weak. It was only on one procedural point that Kavanaugh agreed with environmentalists — one that wasn’t “especially environmental,” according to John Walke, a senior attorney for NRDC, who argued the case in front of Kavanaugh.
The environmental advocacy group Earthjustice scrutinized 26 cases involving the Environmental Protection Agency in which Kavanaugh has written opinions, concurrences, or dissents from the federal bench. In 89 percent of those cases, he favored diluting clean air and clean water protections.
William Snape, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity, looked at 18 wildlife cases and found that Kavanaugh had ruled against animal protections 96 percent of the time. "He lied. He abjectly lied," Snape told The Intercept. "And if he's going to lie about his record on environmental cases, what's he not going to lie about?"
It’s come to the point, as with Donald Trump, where it takes a lot less time to keep track of when Kavanaugh tells the truth than when he lies.