Tag: Justice Kavanaugh

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse says FBI’s Brett Kavanaugh investigation may have been ‘fake’

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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) accused the FBI of launching a “politically constrained and perhaps fake” investigation into accusations of sexual assault and misconduct made against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation process.

After former President Donald Trump nominated Kavanaugh in July 2018, multiple women came forward with allegations of sexual assault and misconduct, notably Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that while they were teenagers, Kavanaugh held her down on a bed, put his hand over her mouth, and attempted to take off her clothes. Kavanaugh denied all of the accusations.

Trump authorized the FBI to investigate Ford’s claim, but the bureau never interviewed Kavanaugh, Ford, or other witnesses who offered to testify, and its report was never made public. In a letter sent last week to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Whitehouse said the Senate Judiciary Committee is reviewing the FBI’s handling of the accusations, and would like the Justice Department to provide support. Continue reading.

‘Facts Matter’: Vermont Urges Kavanaugh To Correct Major Error In Voting Rights Opinion

On Wednesday, Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos took an extraordinary step to set the Supreme Court straight with a letter asking Justice Brett Kavanaugh to correct a recent opinion.

In a court decision on Monday that ruled against allowing ballots to be counted in Wisconsin after Election Day, Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion that incorrectly claimed Vermont had not changed its election rules for the unprecedented challenges facing the 2020 election, despite obvious evidence to the contrary.

“We have formally requested that #SCOTUS correct the erroneous claim by Justice Brett Kavanaugh that #VT has not changed voting procedures for the #2020Elections due to #COVID19. When it comes to issuing decisions on the voting rights of American citizens, facts matter,” The Vermont Secretary of State’s Office tweeted out Wednesday afternoon alongside a copy of the letter. Continue reading.

Justice Kavanaugh’s ‘sloppy’ opinion is an embarrassing mess riddled with errors

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Late Monday night, the Supreme Court issued a ruling blocking a lower court’s decision to force Wisconsin election officials to extend the deadline for accepting mail-in ballots, as long as they were post-marked by Election Day. This decision to limit ballot access was unsurprising given the conservative majority on the court, but as I noted, Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion disturbed many readers because of the views it seemed to express about voting and elections.

But there’s a related aspect of Kavanaugh’s opinion that has attracted significant attention in addition to its ideological bent. It was, many commentators noted, extraordinarily sloppy for a Supreme Court ruling. The opinion was riddled with errors, embarrassingly so, and some of which even relate to the substance of his argument.

To be sure, in light of the pandemic, some state legislatures have exercised their Article I, §4, authority over elections and have changed their election rules for the November 2020 election. Of particular relevance here, a few States such as Mississippi no longer require that absentee ballots be received before election day. See, e.g., Miss. Code Ann. §23–15–637 (2020). Other States such as Vermont, by contrast, have decided not to make changes to their ordinary election rules, including to the election-day deadline for receipt of absentee ballots. [emphasis added] Continue reading.

Journalists say Brett Kavanaugh asked them to lie about him in their book

AlterNet logoU.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has been in the news a lot this week — not only because of Kate Kelly and Robin Pogrebin’s September 14 New York Times article focusing on sexual misconduct allegations by Deborah Ramirez (who knew him when they were students at Yale University during the 1980s) and some Democrats in the House of Representatives who are calling for his impeachment, but also, because of the September 17 release of Kelly and Pogrebin’s new book, “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation.” And the authors, according to The Atlantic’s Garrett Epps and The Washingtonian’s Andrew Beaujon, said this week that Kavanaugh offered them background information for their book — but on the condition that they lie and not say it came from him.

On Wednesday, Epps (who is a Supreme Court correspondent for The Atlantic and a law professor at the University of Baltimore) tweeted that Kavanaugh “offered” Kelly and Pogrebin “a background interview if they would falsely say in the book that he did not speak to them.” At an event in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday promoting the book, Epps tweeted, the authors “were asked why they didn’t report this and said it happened very late in the publication process.”

That event in D.C., according to HuffPost’s Carla Herreria, was a National Press Club event.

View the complete September 19 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Calls for Justice Kavanaugh’s impeachment are mounting. Here’s how it could work.

Washington Post logoOne year ago, a bitterly divided Senate voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh to a lifetime appointment on the nation’s highest court; the vote was 50 to 48.

Now, as the Oct. 8 anniversary of his confirmation nears, the New York Times reports that it has uncovered a previously unreported claim of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh and that it found the FBI interviewed none of the potential witnesses. The story, published Saturday evening, compelled several Democrats to demand a new investigation into the Supreme Court justice.

Even before the recent spate of sexual misconduct allegations, murmurs among Kavanaugh opponents fixated on whether he had lied under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Saturday’s story from the Times quickly raised new questions about whether Kavanaugh perjured himself and reignited calls for his impeachment.<

View the complete September 16 article by Deanna Paul on The Washington Post website here.

Legal scholar tracks down the bizarre origins of the right-wing phrase Justice Kavanaugh used in a new opinion

Justice Brett Kavanaugh was appointed the Supreme Court by President Donald Trump for one clear purpose: to fortify the majority of conservative justices than can protect the right-wing agenda through the judicial branch.

And while there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Kavanaugh will be a dutiful player in this role, there always remains a possibility that a justice will go rogue once appointed and fail to follow the wishes of the party behind his or her nomination. But in a new majority opinion announced on Monday, joined by the other four Republican appointees on the court, Kavanaugh sent a clear signal that he’s a party man to his core.

The decision came in the case of Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, where the court was faced with the question of whether a public access television channel is a state actor and thus bound by the First Amendment. The five conservative justices said the non-profit organization functions as a private actor in its role and is therefore not hampered by the Constitution, while the four liberal justices disagreed.