Complaints filed against Kavanaugh - Part 2

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has received more than a dozen judicial misconduct complaints in recent weeks against Brett M. Kavanaugh, who was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice Saturday, but has chosen for the time being not to refer them to a judicial panel for investigation.

[...]

People familiar with the matter say the allegations made in the complaints — that Kavanaugh was dishonest and lacked judicial temperament during his Senate testimony — had already been widely discussed in the Senate and in the public realm. Roberts did not see an urgent need for them to be resolved by the judicial branch while he continued to review the incoming complaints, they said.

  WaPo

Imagine that!

A judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit — the court on which Kavanaugh serves — sent a string of complaints to Roberts starting three weeks ago, said four people familiar with the matter.

That judge, Karen LeCraft Henderson, had dismissed other complaints against Kavanaugh as frivolous, but she concluded that some were substantive enough that they should not be handled by Kavanaugh’s fellow judges in the D.C. Circuit.

[...]

Under the law, “any person may file a misconduct complaint in the circuit in which the federal judge sits,” she said in the statement.

What a way to start your Supreme Court career.

Never before has a Supreme Court nominee been poised to join the court while a fellow judge recommends that misconduct claims against that nominee warrant review.

[...]

Roberts’s decision not to immediately refer the cases to another appeals court has caused some concern in the legal community. Now that he has been confirmed, the details of the complaints may not become public and instead may be dismissed, legal experts say. Supreme Court justices are not subject to the misconduct rules governing these claims.

Well isn't that handy? The whole thing has been a set up and a sham.

Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University Law School and an expert on Supreme Court ethics [said,] “This is not how the rules anticipated the process would work.”

Well, no shit.

Even if Roberts had referred the complaints, it may have had no practical effect. Referring the case to another appeals court could make the complaints public. But, it typically takes months for a judicial panel to decide the veracity of misconduct complaints, so these would not have been resolved by the time the Senate voted on Kavanaugh’s nomination.

That doesn't make it any less corrupt that Roberts sat on them.

Roberts, an appointee of President George W. Bush, has for many years hired Kavanaugh clerks to work for him at the Supreme Court. Bush credits Kavanaugh in his book with helping him choose Roberts for the high court when Kavanaugh was a White House lawyer.

An incestuous little group that has conspired to destroy American democracy. And where do you go when the highest court in the land is tainted?