More Kavanaugh documents find their way to the light

Emails obtained by the Guardian show that Kavanaugh, who was narrowly confirmed to the supreme court earlier this month, participated in monthly evening cocktails and dinners from 2001 to 2003 with a group of men that included Noel Francisco, who now serves as the Trump administration’s solicitor general. It is not clear whether the dinners continued after Kavanaugh became a federal judge in 2006.

Other attendees included a lawyer who is now a top strategic adviser to Rupert Murdoch; the author of the George W Bush-era “torture memos” that were used to justify illegal interrogation techniques; and two lawyers who now frequently appear before the supreme court on behalf of corporate clients.

The so-called “Eureka” dinners – named after the college that Ronald Reagan attended – were briefly raised in a written question that was submitted to Kavanaugh by senators following his initial confirmation hearing. Asked what the Eureka Club was, Kavanaugh said in a written response: “A group of friends sometimes gathered for dinner. The scheduling emails for those dinners would sometimes be titled ‘Eureka’.”

What Kavanaugh’s answer did not fully explain was that the dinners were attended by an elite group of men closely associated with the Federalist Society, the rightwing organization that has played a major role in vetting and choosing judicial appointments for Republican presidents since its founding in 1982.

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Richard Painter, a critic of Donald Trump who served as the Bush administration’s ethics lawyer from 2005-2007, said senators should have sought more information about the Eureka dinners before Kavanaugh’s confirmation, especially if he continued to attend the regular dinners as a judge on the DC circuit court of appeals.

  Guardian

Do we know that they didn't? They were denied thousands and thousands of documents by Grassley.

The Eureka emails seen by the Guardian cover a limited period while Kavanaugh worked for the White House under George W Bush.

They show that the dinner companions who Kavanaugh described as “friends” include Viet Dinh, who now serves as a senior legal adviser to Rupert Murdoch and is a godfather to Lachlan Murdoch’s child; John Yoo, who wrote the so-called “torture memos”; and Robert Coughlin, the former deputy chief of staff at the Department of Justice who pleaded guilty to a conflict of interest crime related to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. Coughlin was disbarred but reinstated as a lawyer in 2016.

Paul Clement, a lawyer at the firm of Kirkland & Ellis who frequently appears before the supreme court, also attended.

Don't look for Kavanaugh to recuse himself from anything that comes before the court.

The dinners were often arranged by Adam Ciongoli, who served as an adviser to then-attorney general John Ashcroft and now works as general counsel of Campbell Soup. Ciongoli is also a member of the Federalist Society.

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Emails show that the events sometimes included unspecified “special guests”. Several attendees who were approached by the Guardian declined to comment. They did not dispute that judges were among the special guests who were invited. Eugene Scalia, the conservative lawyer and son of the late Antonin Scalia, the supreme court justice who is considered the ideological father of the Federalist Society, was also included on the Eureka emails. Scalia is a lawyer at Gibson Dunn in Washington whose specialty is labor law.

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Alex Azar, who now serves as the secretary of health and human services, also attended the dinners. Azar has oversight of the Trump administration’s claimed effort to reunite parents with children who were separated from them under the White House’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policies. Azar also has oversight of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare law known as Obamacare. Both issues could come before the court.

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Another attendee, according to emails, was Gregory Garre, who served as an assistant to the solicitor general during Bush’s first term and is now a partner at Latham & Watkins. Garre has argued 43 cases before the supreme court. In 2010, Kavanaugh ruled in favour of Garre’s client, an e-cigarrette maker called Sottera, in a case Garre argued before the DC court of appeals.

Speaking of Campbell's Soup...

The Campbell Soup Co. is distancing itself from incendiary comments made by one of its executives, former Senate secretary Kelly Johnston, on Twitter Tuesday about the large group of migrants making its way toward the Mexican border.

In the tweet, Johnston suggested that George Soros’s Open Society Foundations had orchestrated the migration of thousands of people and was even controlling “where they defecate.” Johnston accused the group of having “an army of American immigration lawyers waiting at the border.”

The tweet and Johnston’s account have since been deleted.

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Although it was deleted, images of Johnston’s comments circulated on Twitter, prompting outrage. Many called for his firing and threatened to boycott Campbell’s products.

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In an email to The Post, Campbell’s said it does not support the views Johnston expressed in the tweet. “The opinions Mr. Johnston expresses on Twitter are his individual views and do not represent the position of Campbell Soup Company,” the company said.

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Johnston, who served as secretary of the Senate under then-Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (R), has been with Campbell’s since 2002. He oversees the soupmaker’s trade associations and lobbies the U.S. government on trade and agricultural dealings. Johnston also held several administrative positions with the Republican Party and also was a communications executive for the National Food Processors Association, according to his Bloomberg biography.

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Other images of deleted tweets showed that Johnston’s comments were not the first he had made about the migrant caravan or Soros. In one tweet earlier this month, Johnston seemed to mock the idea of a hurricane endangering the lives of migrants.

  WaPo

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.