During the third day of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, Sen.
Kennedy (R-La.) questioned
Kavanaugh
about “getting into trouble” at the elite all-boys school Georgetown
Prep, eliciting nervous laughter.
Dodging the question, Kavanaugh told Kennedy that at Georgetown Prep, “I
had a lot of friends, I’ve talked a lot about my friends. And they’ve
been here. So it was very formative.”
When Kennedy pressed his question about “trouble,” Kavanaugh replied,
“That’s encompassed by the friends, I think.”
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Kennedy concluded by saying he’s decided to not ask Kavanaugh whether
his underage friends were “sneaking a few beers past Jesus.” Kavanaugh
shook his head, said “Hey,” and giggled again in response to a comment
not caught by the microphone.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) took the microphone, saying, “I for one am
grateful for the senator’s self-restraint.”
It is unknown what motivated Kennedy’s questions at the time, although
Kavanaugh’s close friend and classmate Mike G. Judge recorded in his
book
Wasted
the binge drinking that dominated those years at Georgetown Prep.
Similarly, Kavanaugh’s yearbook entry made repeated references to keg
parties and
vomiting.
After the hearing, it was revealed that professor Christine Blasey Ford
had informed members of Congress that Kavanaugh and Judge had sexually
assaulted her while they were all in high school.
In a 2015 address to
Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, Trump Supreme Court
nominee Brett Kavanaugh discusses his friendships with and envy of
America’s corporate elite. Arguing in favor of an “impartial” judiciary,
Kavanaugh discusses how he knows these men, whether from his days at the
boy’s-only Georgetown Prep, Yale, in the George W. Bush White House, or
at the corporate law powerhouse Kirkland & Ellis.
In his prepared
remarks
for the speech given March 30, 2015, Kavanaugh planned to make a joke
about how popular one of his wealthiest friends, Mike Bidwell, is:
I am proud to say that three Georgetown Prep classmates of mine—Mike
Bidwill, Don Urgo, and Phil Merkle—happen to be 1990
graduates of this law school. They remain very good friends of mine,
and they well reflect the values and excellence of both Georgetown
Prep and this law school. You may recognize Mike Bidwill’s name. He is
the President of the Arizona Cardinals football team. I am pretty sure
he is on the Dean’s speed dial. Yet he is the same humble, generous,
friendly guy he was when he was fourteen years old.
Kavanaugh diverged from his prepared remarks, however:
By coincidence, three classmates of mine at Georgetown Prep were
graduates of this law school in 1990. And are really really good
friends of mine: Mike Bidwill, Don Urgo and Phil Merkle.
And they were good friends of mine then. And are still good friends of
mine; as recently as this weekend, when we were all on email together.
Bidwill has used his team’s
website
to support Kavanaugh’s nomination. As Deadspin writer Samer Kalaf notes,
he then “went on a conservative radio show to continue to push for his
old high school pal” and
“bellyached
about how unfair it is to be criticized for requiring that
NFL players only protest or demonstrate where
no one can see them.”
But fortunately, we had a good saying that we’ve held firm to to this
day, as the Dean was reminding me before the talk, which is, “What
happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep.” That’s been a
good thing for all of us, I think.
This line earned some mild chuckles from the audience.
Now that Kavanaugh is in line to join fellow Georgetown Prep alumnus
Neil Gorsuch on the highest court in the land, it appears that “what
happens at Georgetown Prep” may not stay there. He and fellow classmate
Mark G. Judge have been accused of sexual
assault
by professor Christine Blasey Ford. There is no statute of limitations
on such a crime in Maryland.
Kavanaugh continued:
The Dean [Dan Attridge] is a wonderful man. He and I worked
together at Kirkland and Ellis. We had memorable cases and lawyers at
Kirkland and Ellis. I think back at those times.
Dan Attridge’s Kirkland &
Ellis
page notes one of his “ground-breaking” victories:
Counsel for Nationwide Insurance in over 400 Hurricane Katrina
coverage cases in Mississippi, winning the ground-breaking first
case to go
to trial and defeating the Attorney General’s challenge to the
policy’s flood exclusion.
At the time, Kavanaugh was working in the Bush White House, as the
administration’s racist neglect in the run-up to and aftermath of
Katrina led to the death of 3000 Americans. The White House and Senator
Grassley have refused to make public Kavanaugh’s
role
in the Katrina disaster.
Kavanaugh went on to describe his envy of another fellow corporate
lawer:
And one person comes to mind that we worked with, was a guy who was a
little younger than I was, named Ted Ullyot. And Ted was a great
lawyer, great guy, and he worked with us at Kirkland. Then, when I was
at the White House and became this job called staff secretary, I had
to hire a deputy. And Ted was a great lawyer and I brought him in as
my deputy. And then I went on to be a judge. And I remember getting a
call from him in 2007 or 2008. And he said, “Yeah, I’m gonna go take
this job in California.” “Oh wow, doing what?” “I’m gonna be general
counsel of this company.” And I had never heard of the company he was
talking about. It was a general counsel of Facebook. And that turned
out to be a really good move. Yeah. And that’s been a…
You know, I am committed to public service, as I said, but I do spend
some time reading Robert Frost, “The road not taken.”
Claiming
unified opposition to the nomination of Trump Supreme Court pick Brett
Kavanaugh, Senate Democrats are fundraising to help re-elect incumbents
who are not opposing Kavanaugh. In an email to its list in Sen. Mazie
Hirono (D-Hawaii)’s voice, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee
wrote, “We need to stand together. So much is at stake.”
The email linked to a
petition to “oppose
Kavanaugh’s nomination” and then to a fundraising
page
to “Save the Supreme Court” and “Help Elect Senate Democrats.”
It is unclear how contributing to the DSCC
would help save the Supreme Court from Kavanaugh, described in the
DSCC email as a ” pre-selected political
ideologue, nominated possibly because he believes a sitting president
should be shielded from civil lawsuits, criminal investigation, and
prosecution—no matter the facts.”
For there to be any likelihood of Kavanaugh’s nomination failing, the
49-member Democratic caucus would need to be unanimous in their
opposition. But that is not the case—in particular with the vulnerable
Democrats most heavily backed by the DSCC. As
CNNreports,
“Senators signal Kavanaugh appears on solid ground to win confirmation”
:
“Not so far,” Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a North Dakota Democrat, told
CNN Wednesday afternoon when asked if
anything she’s heard so far would be considered disqualifying.
“No, I haven’t seen anything from that standpoint,” Sen. Joe Manchin,
a West Virginia Democrat, said when asked if he’s heard anything that
would lead him to vote no. “He’s handled himself very professionally.”
Sen. Doug Jones, the Democrat from Alabama who won his special
election after Gorsuch was confirmed, was non-committal when asked
about Kavanaugh on Wednesday.
In addition to Heitkamp, Manchin, and Jones, Claire
McCaskill
of Missouri, Bill Nelson of Florida, Jon Tester of Montana, Joe Donnelly
of Indiana are
equivocal
on Kavanaugh.
“There is universal confidence in the Democratic Caucus for Sen.
Schumer, whether they’re the progressives or the more conservative
members of our caucus. There’s strong respect and admiration for how
he handles diversity in our caucus,” said Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin.
“They’re the people that you can’t be pure enough for,” said Sen.
Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). of Schumer’s detractors. “Unless we can
convince a few Republicans, then we don’t have the votes. That’s goal
No. 1 and the outside groups should stay focused on that.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). praised Schumer for “holding a very
wide ranging caucus together in a way that has made strong points in
the hearing without causing problems for our 2018 candidates.”
“There is what I call Democrat disease, which is to waste our time
fighting with each other and quarreling over purity contests,”
Whitehouse said. “And of all times to lose our way in those quarrels,
this is perhaps the worst.”
In an
interview
with The Hill, Democratic whip Dick Durbin of Illinois was similarly
critical: “The Senate doesn’t work that way, and the groups that are
asking for it are not in touch with reality.”
As whip, Durbin is the senator officially responsible for wrangling the
votes of the Democratic caucus.
In an
interview
with NPR’s Audie Cornish, Whitehouse similarly
criticized the hearing protesters for being “not helpful” particularly
for “the states in which we have, you know, our Senate races.”
Everett and Schor editorialize that letting Kavanaugh onto the Supreme
Court in return for electoral victories in November would “vindicate”
Schumer: “If a handful of red-state Democrats eventually support
Kavanaugh and then win reelection, Schumer’s strategy will be
vindicated.”
Trump Supreme Court nominee and former George W. Bush White House
official Brett Kavanaugh has ruled repeatedly on behalf of industrial
polluters, particularly on climate change. As a judge on the United
States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (the D.C. Circuit),
Kavanaugh has argued, sometimes successfully, to block action on carbon
pollution.