In spite of the sexual assault allegations against him, Brett Kavanaugh is set to receive a Senate vote on Saturday confirming him to the Supreme Court. Since Christine Blasey Ford came forward three weeks ago with her account of an attempted rape, attention has focused on alleged Kavanaugh transgressions involving sex and alcohol. But from the moment Trump put his name forward, Mother Jones has been reporting on numerous other episodes from his past that make him a potentially problematic pick for a lifetime appointment to the country’s highest court.
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1. He appears to have lied repeatedly to Congress while under oath.
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2. He made Russian election interference easier and Robert Mueller’s job harder. In a 2011 ruling, he gutted part of a law restricting foreign influence in US elections.
3. His finances are the murkiest of any recent Supreme Court nominee.
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4. He believes assault weapons can’t be banned because they’re “common.” And he defended that opinion in his confirmation hearing.
5. He has close ties to a disgraced judge accused of repeated sexual misconduct.
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6. He wanted to ask Bill Clinton extremely lewd questions.
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7. He has a track record of ruling for whoever’s more powerful. A study found that he backs federal agencies only when doing so helps big corporations.
8. He’s not a fan of affirmative action. Newly released emails show he took a dim view of a government program to support minority-owned businesses.
9. There are serious questions about his judicial temperament.
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10. He could undo efforts to restore the Supreme Court’s integrity.
Mother Jones
[L]osing ourselves in this political circus and the subsequent media frenzy surrounding Kavanaugh’s sexual past glosses over another aspect of his professional career that should concern every single individual: his promotion of the national security state.
The PATRIOT Act
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According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which filed a Freedom of Information Act Request for Kavanaugh’s official government correspondence records [...] , the Supreme Court Justice nominee referred to the PATRIOT Act as a "measured, careful, responsible, and constitutional approach” in an email sent to a colleague.
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Kavanaugh was also one of the individuals tasked with its drafting. He has been definitively credited with the line, “…the new law will update laws authorizing government surveillance.” [...] If he is the constitutionalist he has claimed to be on several occasions, then he would know that the Constitution already prohibits the government from broad, warrantless searches of this nature. This is not a protection that can simply be “updated.”
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The Torture Memos
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In 2006, when Judge Kavanaugh was being questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee as he waited to be confirmed to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, he went on the record stating that he knew nothing of these memos before their public release. At several points during his hearing, he denied having anything to do with these memos specifically stating that he was “not involved” in any conversations regarding the rules governing the detention of combatants He also denied ever having seen the correspondence at all.
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The reason this has raised red flags for those already skeptical about Kavanaugh is that his position at the time dictated that memos and other written correspondence would have passed by his desk at some point before reaching their end recipient.
Enemy Combatants
Additionally, a year after the 2006 hearing, the Washington Post reported on a contentious meeting that had occurred in the White House in 2002. The conversation was centered on speculation as to whether or not the Supreme Court would accept the Bush Administration’s assertion that they could label an American citizen an “enemy combatant” at their discretion, allowing the person in question to be locked up for an indefinite amount of time.
As per the Washington Post’s reporting, Judge Kavanaugh was not only present at this meeting but was specifically summoned to weigh in on the matter since he was himself a former clerk for swing vote judge, Justice Kennedy. At the meeting, he voiced his concerns that Justice Kennedy and other swing voters on the Supreme Court would never side with the administration’s controversial decision. This meeting was brought up again just a couple of weeks ago, addressing the concerns some Senators still have over Kavanaugh’s insistence that he had no role in such conversations when it appears that he did.
Senator Durbin, who sat on the Senate Judicial committee in 2006 sent Kavanaugh a letter in which he states, “it appears that you misled me,” but he never received a response, even after he followed up with Kavanaugh recently after he had received the Supreme Court nomination.
Metadata: Due Process for Me, Not for Thee
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[I]n a ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Kavanaugh ruled that “the Government’s metadata collection program is entirely consistent with the Fourth Amendment.” He also later stated that “that critical national security need outweighs the impact on privacy occasioned by this program.” Again, a rather odd conclusion for a staunch “constitutionalist” to support.
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This mass surveillance of the American people not only violated the specific statutes in the Fourth Amendment that specified how individuals could be searched by the state, but it also violated the right of due process— the same due process that Kavanaugh has asked be upheld while he undergoes the confirmation process.
Foundation for Economic Education
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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