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LISA GRAVES, lisa at documentedinvestigations.org
Co-director of Documented Investigations and former chief counsel for nominations for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Graves said today: “On Tuesday, a panel of federal judges dismissed 83 ethics complaints filed against Brett Kavanaugh, stating that the Code of Conduct for United States Judges “must be dismissed because, due to his elevation to the Supreme Court, Justice Kavanaugh is no longer a judge covered by” the relevant act. [PDF]

Said Graves: “John Roberts referred the ethics complaints — that had been filed against Kavanaugh for his conduct while serving as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit — to the Tenth Circuit court to examine. That court refused to apply the Code to Kavanaugh, even though the core of the ethics complaints against him was based on his deceptive testimony under oath before the U.S. Senate. The Code applies to the conduct of all U.S. federal judges, except for those on the U.S. Supreme Court.

“A core tenet of American democracy is that no person, no matter how powerful, is above the law — not a president or a judge on the Supreme Court. Because the courts will not police themselves by investigating the 83 ethics complaints filed against Brett Kavanaugh based on his testimony to the Senate, Congress must do so. As I wrote in September, I believe there is strong evidence that Kavanaugh committed perjury in his testimony to obtain his initial appointment to the D.C. Circuit and he lied repeatedly in his testimony in September to obtain confirmation to the Supreme Court. I call on the U.S. House of Representatives to examine these matters because neither judges nor the president’s lawyers or children should be allowed to lie to Congress with impunity.”

Graves added: “Congress also needs to secure documents about Kavanaugh that were improperly withheld from the Senate and conduct a full investigation into the evidence provided that Kavanaugh assaulted Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and others, since the White House thwarted a full investigation of all relevant witnesses, including Kavanaugh himself. Under our Constitution, judges are only allowed to serve with ‘good behavior’ and Kavanaugh’s deceitful statements under oath violate that requirement. Of course, the Code of Conduct should apply to the judges on our nation’s highest court, but the House need not wait for the extreme partisans in the Senate or the White House to require that in order to investigate the manifest misconduct of Kavanaugh, who is unworthy of a position of trust on our Supreme Court.”

Graves was the chief counsel for nominations for the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee when Kavanaugh first went before the Committee. She wrote several pieces documenting Kavanaugh’s lying under oath and appeared on such IPA news releases as “’Kavanaugh Lied Under Oath About Memos I Wrote’” and “Kavanaugh’s Pattern of Lying Under Oath” see here.

Note: IPA senior analyst Sam Husseini has challenged the widespread use of the term “Justice” as an honorific to judges on the Supreme Court as corrosive to the actual concept of justice — see the piece “Stop Calling Him ‘Justice Roberts.’“

LYNN STUART PARRAMORE, lynn@lynnparramore.com, @lynnparramore
Lynn Stuart Parramore is a cultural historian and freelance writer who covers gender issues and the economy. She said today: “It is my view that on the Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh will work to thwart the will of the American people, especially women.

“Hand-picked by the Federalist Society and backed by the Koch network, Kavanaugh is an emblem of the right-wing takeover of America outlined by historian Nancy MacLean in her 2017 book, Democracy in Chains. He is part of a movement, never stronger in America, to reorient the legal system away from the influence of ordinary citizens and towards the interests of corporations and the wealthy — a movement dedicated to lowering taxes for the rich and transferring critical public functions to the private market. [See her review of MacLean’s book: “Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America.”]

“On the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh can be expected to be a staunch defender of efforts to deregulate business, eliminate civil rights protections, and gut regulations for health and the environment. He is philosophically oriented to support the privatizing of government institutions like public schools and prisons and to attempt to do away with programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

“For women, Kavanaugh’s role on the Supreme Court has particularly devastating potential. His hostility to Roe v. Wade and reproductive freedom; his hostility to workers making discrimination and harassment claims; and his opposition to the social safety net upon women disproportionately depend make him a threat to women’s health, dignity, and economic security. He is poised to be a foe of the public sector, a vital source of women’s employment, as well as critical services like publicly subsidized daycare. Kavanaugh poses a serious threat to women in their dual roles as wage earners and caregivers.”

MARJORIE COHN, marjorielegal at gmail.com, @marjoriecohn
Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and just wrote the piece “Five Reasons Why the GOP Is Rushing to Confirm Kavanaugh” for Truthout, which goes through the upcoming Supreme Court docket. She said today: “Responding to pressure from Sen. Jeff Flake, a swing vote on Kavanaugh, the GOP-led Senate Judiciary Committee ordered a perfunctory FBI ‘investigation,’ which failed to interview several critical witnesses. Now Flake and Sen. Susan Collins, another swing vote, say the FBI report contains no corroboration of Dr. Blasey Ford’s claim. They are setting up political cover to vote for confirmation of Kavanaugh.”

Cohn said today that contrary to much rhetoric, including from Flake, “presumption of innocence only applies in criminal cases, not in a judicial confirmation proceeding.” See also CNN piece “What Exactly is Jeff Flake Looking for?” by Page Pate, which notes that “There is no such thing as a ‘presumption of confirmation.'”

Cohn’s past pieces include “Brett Kavanaugh is a Threat to Racial Justice and Voting Rights” and “Aggressive Kavanaugh Portrays Himself as Victim,” which states: “Kavanaugh’s outrage at being accused of sexual misconduct is hypocritical. And his contempt for Bill Clinton goes back at least two decades. During the 1998 investigation of Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky affair, Kavanaugh worked for independent counsel Kenneth Starr. At the time, Kavanaugh advocated asking Clinton explicit and detailed questions about oral sex, masturbation, vaginal stimulation and phone sex.”

She also wrote “Kavanaugh Scorns International Law and Loves Executive Power,” which states: “During the Bush administration [which Kavanugh worked for], the Supreme Court checked and balanced the executive branch in several war on terror cases. … If confirmed to the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh will almost certainly defer to the president’s wartime decisions during the perpetual war on terror. He will likely extend that deference to Donald Trump’s immigration policies under the guise of ‘national security.’ And Kavanaugh’s frightening theory will encourage the president to disobey any law he deems unconstitutional, including customary and treaty-based international law.”

On Tuesday, Trump mocked Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony against his Supreme Court nominee, Brent Kavanagh: “What neighborhood was it in? I don’t know. Where’s the house? I don’t know. Upstairs, downstairs — where was it? I don’t know — but I had one beer. That’s the only thing I remember.”

Also on Tuesday, the Washington Post reported: “In an unprecedented move, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday released an explicit statement that purports to describe the sexual preferences of a woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh of misconduct.”

JENNIFER L. POZNER, jenniferleepozneratgmail.com, @jennpozner
Pozner is a media critic, media literacy educator and media activist. She is the author of Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV and founder of Women In Media & News.

She just wrote the piece “Kavanaugh Hearings Showcase GOP’s White Male Persecution Complex” for Truthout, in which she writes: “Kavanaugh emerged from the hearing looking guiltier than ever, and his apparent history of sexual violence seemed to make the GOP Judiciary members embrace him more fervently. The motives underneath this empathy for Kavanaugh are frightening. In the days since the allegations first leaked, GOP men fell all over themselves to make male sexual violence in high school seem universal and normative. ‘If this is the new standard, no one will ever want or be able to serve in government or on the judiciary,’ said Ed Rollins, a Trump PAC co-chair, while a lawyer close to the White House told Politico, ‘If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man certainly should be worried.’ …

“Why would they do this with the contentious midterm elections hanging in the balance? It’s not just that they’re obsessed with controlling the Supreme Court, or that they want the seat to go to a guy who would legally prevent prosecution of the president: They simply don’t seem to believe this strategy is a risk.”

Also see from Shamus Khan, the chair of the sociology department at Columbia University in the Washington Post: “Kavanaugh is lying. His upbringing explains why,” which states: “Brett Kavanaugh is not telling the whole truth. When President George W. Bush nominated him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2006, he told senators that he’d had nothing to do with the war on terror’s detention policies; that was not true. Kavanaugh also claimed under oath, that year and again this month, that he didn’t know that Democratic Party memos a GOP staffer showed him in 2003 were illegally obtained; his emails from that period reveal that these statements were probably false. And it cannot be possible that the Supreme Court nominee was both a well-behaved virgin who never lost control as a young man, as he told Fox News and the Senate Judiciary Committee this past week, and an often-drunk member of the ‘Keg City Club’ and a ‘Renate Alumnius,’ as he seems to have bragged to many people and written into his high school yearbook. Then there are the sexual misconduct allegations against him, which he denies.”

Sen. Dick Durbin and other senators repeatedly asked Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on Thursday whether he would ask for an impartial FBI investigation into the allegations against him. He repeatedly declined to do so. See video.

The Intercept in, “Republicans Stop Having Prosecutor Ask Questions After She Presses Kavanaugh on July 1, 1982 Calendar Note,” reports: “Republican senators have reclaimed their time from Rachel Mitchell, the sex crimes prosecutor they brought in to conduct questioning on their behalf.

“The change in tactics came just after Mitchell zeroed in on Kavanaugh’s entry on his calendar for the night of Thursday, July 1, 1982.

“The entry recorded Kavanaugh’s plan to ‘Go to Timmy’s for Skis, w/ Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie, Squi.’ [The Washington Post now identifies Timmy as Tim Gaudette, see “Kavanaugh is pressed on the key July 1 entry in his calendar. But only to a point.”]

“The slang word ‘brewskis’ was a common term for ‘brews’ or beers in the 1980s, so this appears to be about a planned drinking session on the Thursday before the Fourth of July weekend.

“In her prepared testimony, Christine Blasey Ford said that she was assaulted in the summer of 1982 at a house party attended by her friend Leland Ingham, as well as ‘Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, P. J. Smyth and one other boy whose name I cannot recall.'”As the Washington Post article summarized: “During her testimony, Ford made clear that the event at which she says she was assaulted was a casual get-together before the others (who were older than her and had a later curfew) went to other, bigger parties. Kavanaugh says that the gathering at Timmy’s on July 1 was essentially that.

“We noted Thursday, too, that the time frame of this July 1 party fits with Ford’s testimony. She says that six to eight weeks after the alleged assault, she saw Judge working at a store in the area. Judge’s book indicates that he was working at that store for several weeks in early to mid-August.”

BOB SCHIFF, robertfschiff@gmail.com
LISA GRAVES, lisa@documentedinvestigations.org
JEFF BERMAN, jeffberman@gmail.com

Schiff served as chief counsel for Senator Russ Feingold; Graves served as chief counsel for nominations for Sen. Leahy; Berman served as chief counsel for Senator Charles Schumer. They recently wrote the piece “Brett Kavanaugh Can’t Be Trusted. We Know Because We Worked as Counsel to Senators When He Was in the Bush White House” for Time magazine.

They give examples of Kavanaugh lying under oath, including: “At his first confirmation hearing in April 2004, Kavanaugh said he had never received material stolen from Democrats. He repeated that testimony in May 2006 under questioning by both Democratic Senators and Chairman Hatch. But emails released earlier this month, after originally being deemed ‘committee confidential,’ show that Kavanaugh was in frequent contact with [Manuel] Miranda and received material that had been stolen from the Senate Judiciary Committee server. These emails contradict his testimony under oath. …”

Similarly, former Senator Russ Feingold recently wrote the piece “We Know Brett Kavanaugh Has Lied Already” for the Huffington Post.

In “‘Boofed,’ ‘Devil’s Triangle,’ ‘FFFFFFourth of July’: How Brett Kavanaugh explained his yearbook jokes,” CBS News now indicates Kavanaugh falsified under oath on Thursday when asked about the meaning of several sexual terms he used in his high school yearbook profile. For example, Devil’s Triangle: “This term on the yearbook page is also known as a sexual slang term for a threesome involving two men and one woman. … But Kavanaugh told the Senate Judiciary Committee that this was a reference to a ‘drinking game’ with three cups arranged in a triangle. … ‘Boofed’ is also sometimes used as a vulgar slang term, usually referring to some mix of anal sex and drugs. The New Yorker said it ‘refers to the practice of anally ingesting alcohol or drugs.’ But Kavanaugh said it was simply a teenage joke between him and Judge about ‘flatulence.'”

See New York Times piece: “Brett Kavanaugh Urged Graphic Questions in Clinton Inquiry.”

Amnesty International USA just issued a “Rare Call for a Halt on Kavanaugh Nomination.”

The group states: “Amnesty International believes that the vetting of Brett Kavanaugh’s record on human rights has been insufficient and calls for the vote on his nomination for Supreme Court of the United States to be further postponed unless and until any information relevant to Kavanaugh’s possible involvement in human rights violations — including in relation to the U.S. government’s use of torture and other forms of ill-treatment, such as during the CIA detention program — is declassified and made public.”

Margaret Huang, executive director of Amnesty International USA said: “Amnesty International takes no position on the appointment of particular individuals to government positions, unless they are reasonably suspected of crimes under international law and could use their appointment to the position in question to either prevent accountability for these crimes or to continue perpetration.”

See report from earlier this month on “Confidential Emails Reveal Kavanaugh Wanted to Make Author of Bush-era Torture Memo a Judge” about just some of Kavanaugh’s documents highlighted by Sen. Cory Booker.

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle at illinois.edu
Boyle is professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He was an elected member of the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA from 1988 to 1992.

He said today: “Contrary to the mantra that the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have it in for Kavanaugh, they’ve largely let him off the hook on a number of critical issues, instead favoring theatrics.

“While there’s substantial attention being paid to the serious charges of sexual assault by Kavanaugh, there’s been very little note that he is a putative war criminal. Specifically, recently released documents show that while Kavanaugh worked for the George W. Bush administration, one of the people he attempted to put on the judiciary was John Yoo, who authored many of the justifications for torture that came out of the Bush administration.

“I’ve had very serious problems with others placed on the Supreme Court, but I’ve never thought of them as putative war criminals. And while other parts of Kavanaugh’s professional record are unseemly, including his lying under oath, his work for Ken Starr and for Bush’s election during the Florida standoff in 2000, this stands out even in such a record.

“And while some of the current members of the Supreme Court have been members of the Federalist Society, none have been of this ilk of members like John Yoo and Bush Attorney General/White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez — as Kavanaugh, who worked for Gonzalez at the White House. The U.S. Senate must not place a putative war criminal on the U.S. Supreme Court.” See Boyle’s analysis in The Guardian. 

The following exchange is from a debate between Yoo and Doug Cassel, director of Notre Dame Law School’s Center for Civil and Human Rights held on Dec. 1, 2005:

Cassel: “If the president deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?”
Yoo: “No treaty.”
Cassel: “Also no law by Congress — that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.”
Yoo: “I think it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that.”

Listen to audio here.

BOB SCHIFF, robertfschiff at gmail.com
JEFF BERMAN, jeffberman at gmail.com
KRISTINE LUCIUS, lucius at civilrights.org
LISA GRAVES, lisa at documentedinvestigations.org
Schiff served as chief counsel for Senator Russ Feingold; Lucius served as nominations counsel and staff director for Senator Patrick Leahy; Berman served as chief counsel for Senator Charles Schumer; Graves served as chief counsel for nominations for Sen. Leahy.

They just wrote the piece “Brett Kavanaugh Can’t Be Trusted. We Know Because We Worked as Counsel to Senators When He Was in the Bush White House” for Time magazine.

They write: “We watched the testimony of Judge Brett Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee with dismay and disbelief. His many misleading and false statements cast serious doubt on whether he should be confirmed to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. …

“This is not about the dance many nominees attempt in order to avoid expressing an opinion on legal issues they might face on the court. It is about a pattern of deceptive answers on a range of questions about his past activities and agenda to change our laws through the courts. We believe this deception, both earlier this month and in his 2004 and 2006 nomination hearings for the D.C. Circuit, was intentional.”

They give several examples, including: “At his first confirmation hearing in April 2004, Kavanaugh said he had never received material stolen from Democrats. He repeated that testimony in May 2006 under questioning by both Democratic Senators and Chairman Hatch.

“But emails released earlier this month, after originally being deemed ‘committee confidential,’ show that Kavanaugh was in frequent contact with [Manuel] Miranda and received material that had been stolen from the Senate Judiciary Committee server. These emails contradict his testimony under oath. …”

The Washington Post reports: “An attorney for Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who alleged Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh assaulted her when the two were in high school, said Monday that Ford is willing to testify about the allegations before the Senate Judiciary Committee.” The Post also reports “On the advice of [attorney Debra] Katz, who said she believed Ford would be attacked as a liar if she came forward, Ford took a polygraph test administered by a former FBI agent in early August.”

Time magazine just published the piece “Brett Kavanaugh Can’t Be Trusted. We Know Because We Worked as Counsel to Senators When He Was in the Bush White House.”

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle at illinois.edu
Boyle is professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law and has taught criminal law. He said today: “Kavanaugh clearly has little compulsion against lying under oath. Prof. Christine Blasey Ford has taken and passed a lie detector test. So the question becomes: Will Kavanaugh take a lie detector test?” See Boyle’s analysis in The Guardian and the IPA news release “Kavanaugh and the Federalist Society” and “Will a Member of Congress Move to Impeach Kavanaugh?”

See recent piece from The Daily Beast: “Newly Released Emails Show Brett Kavanaugh May Have Perjured Himself at Least Four Times,”

Also, see from FAIR: “Establishment Media Shy Away From Claims of Perjury by Kavanaugh.”

LISA GRAVES, Lisa at documentedinvestigations.org, @thelisagraves
Graves just co-wrote the piece “Brett Kavanaugh Can’t Be Trusted. We Know Because We Worked as Counsel to Senators When He Was in the Bush White House” for Time magazine. She also recently wrote the piece “I Wrote Some of the Stolen Memos That Brett Kavanaugh Lied to the Senate About” for Slate.

She is the former chief counsel for nominations for the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice. Graves is the co-founder of Documented, which investigates corporate influence on democracy.

She writes that Kavanaugh should be removed from his current judgeship “because he was repeatedly asked under oath as part of his 2004 and 2006 confirmation hearings for his position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit about whether he had received such information from [GOP Senate aide Manuel] Miranda, and each time he falsely denied it.

“For example, in 2004, Sen. Orrin Hatch asked him directly if he received ‘any documents that appeared to you to have been drafted or prepared by Democratic staff members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.’ Kavanaugh responded, unequivocally, ‘No.’

“In 2006, Sen. Ted Kennedy asked him if he had any regrets about how he treated documents he had received from Miranda that he later learned were stolen. Kavanaugh rejected the premise of the question, restating that he never even saw one of those documents.

“Back then the senators did not have the emails that they have now, showing that Miranda sent Kavanaugh numerous documents containing what was plainly research by Democrats. Some of those emails went so far as to warn Kavanaugh not to distribute the Democratic talking points he was being given. …

Graves writes: “He lied. Under oath. And he did so repeatedly.

“Significantly, he did so even though a few years earlier he had helped spearhead the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for perjury in a private civil case. Back then Kavanaugh took lying under oath so seriously that he was determined to do everything he could to help remove a president from office.

“Now we know that he procured his own confirmation to the federal bench by committing the same offense. And he did so not in a private case but in the midst of public hearings for a position of trust, for a lifetime appointment to the federal judiciary.” See recent New York Times piece “Brett Kavanaugh Urged Graphic Questions in Clinton Inquiry.”

LISA GRAVES, lisa at documentedinvestigations.org, @thelisagraves
Graves just wrote the piece “I Wrote Some of the Stolen Memos That Brett Kavanaugh Lied to the Senate About” for Slate.

She was on the program “Democracy Now!” this morning. She is the former chief counsel for nominations for the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice. Graves is the co-founder of Documented, which investigates corporate influence on democracy.

She writes that Kavanaugh should be removed from his current judgeship “because he was repeatedly asked under oath as part of his 2004 and 2006 confirmation hearings for his position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit about whether he had received such information from [GOP Senate aide Manuel] Miranda, and each time he falsely denied it.

“For example, in 2004, Sen. Orrin Hatch asked him directly if he received ‘any documents that appeared to you to have been drafted or prepared by Democratic staff members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.’ Kavanaugh responded, unequivocally, ‘No.’

“In 2006, Sen. Ted Kennedy asked him if he had any regrets about how he treated documents he had received from Miranda that he later learned were stolen. Kavanaugh rejected the premise of the question, restating that he never even saw one of those documents.

“Back then the senators did not have the emails that they have now, showing that Miranda sent Kavanaugh numerous documents containing what was plainly research by Democrats. Some of those emails went so far as to warn Kavanaugh not to distribute the Democratic talking points he was being given. …

Graves writes: “He lied. Under oath. And he did so repeatedly.

“Significantly, he did so even though a few years earlier he had helped spearhead the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for perjury in a private civil case. Back then Kavanaugh took lying under oath so seriously that he was determined to do everything he could to help remove a president from office.

“Now we know that he procured his own confirmation to the federal bench by committing the same offense. And he did so not in a private case but in the midst of public hearings for a position of trust, for a lifetime appointment to the federal judiciary.” See recent New York Times piece “Brett Kavanaugh Urged Graphic Questions in Clinton Inquiry.”

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle at illinois.edu
Boyle is professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He said today: “What’s needed is a brave member of the House to introduce a Bill of Impeachment against Kavanaugh immediately for perjury to force this issue. That’s what we need. Machinations from the Democratic Party leadership are more Kabuki theater.” See recent comments from Boyle on The Real News, in The Guardian and the IPA news release “Kavanaugh and the Federalist Society.”

Boyle was was legal adviser to Rep. Henry B. González when he released classified material on the House floor in 1992 in an attempt to impeach George H. W. Bush following the Gulf War. Bush would later write in his memoirs that if the Gulf War “drags out, not only will I take the blame, but I will probably have impeachment proceedings filed against me.”

See recent piece from The Daily Beast: “Newly Released Emails Show Brett Kavanaugh May Have Perjured Himself at Least Four Times,” which notes the documentation of Kavanaugh’s past falsehoods is only due to recently released emails, but that “only 7 percent of Kavanaugh’s White House records have been released to the public. …

“The clearest contradiction between Judge Kavanaugh’s sworn testimony and the formerly confidential email record concerns the nomination of Judge William Pryor, a conservative firebrand. In 2006, Kavanaugh was asked, by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, whether Pryor’s extreme statements disturbed him. Kavanaugh replied that he was not involved in the selection or vetting of Judge Pryor.”

The Daily Beast notes that last week, Sen. Patrick Leahy entered “a formerly-confidential email into the record that states clearly that Kavanaugh actually did interview Pryor. ‘How did the Pryor interview go?’ he was asked in December, 2002. ‘Call me,’ he replied.”

The just-disclosed emails also show a leading voice defending Kavanaugh knew he was actually involved in the Pryor nomination. Benjamin Wittes, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and editor-in-chief of Lawfare blog was himself communicating with Kavanaugh about the Pryor nomination at the time, writing to Kavanagh: “I take it back. I will write something about the decision to nominate Pryor promptly. … You should send over any exculpatory information you might have quickly.”

Wittes just responded to this revelation by writing: “I’m off Twitter until further notice.”