Law The Search For The 114th Supreme Court Justice: The Witch-Hunt Against Judge Brett Kavanaugh

Who do you believe?


  • Total voters
    453
That's not necessarily true. There are many reasons for inequality of outcome that have nothing to do with discrimination.

Your view seems to be that there are white males on the Supreme Court who were less qualified at the time of their appointments than certain non-white, non-males. Please provide a couple of examples.

Discrimination by race or discrimination by wealth is the basically the same to me in this sort of discussion. There are many barriers for entry currently and historically into the legal profession, that much is true.

It just so happens most of those barriers are more easily overcome by white men, right?
 


People might take this "white male judge privilege" grievance seriously had the same folks already came out and objected to Garland's nomination from the beginning with their affirmative action bullshit, because at least that would be an indication that's they're not a partisan hack grasping at straws.

But alas, it's just selective-outrage, as usual. I guess white male judges are okay if he's our white male judge, and it's not okay when he's their white male judge.

Petty shit like these is why registered Democratic and Republican posters never cease to be a source of amusement for the remaining 1/3 of the WR.
 
Last edited:
Hey Bernie (and all Senate Dems), if Kavanaugh is as terrible as you think he is, why do you need to lie about his track record? o_O

Bernie Sanders' claim that Brett Kavanaugh defies Supreme Court precedent a stretch

By Manuela Tobias on Monday, July 16th, 2018



After President Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court, Democrats highlighted bits of his paper trail on the D.C. Court of Appeals to galvanize opposition.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called out Kavanaugh’s generous interpretation of the powers granted to the president by the Constitution.

"Brett Kavanaugh, contrary to 200 years of Supreme Court precedent, believes a president ‘may decline to enforce a statute … when the president deems the statute unconstitutional,’ " Sanders wrote in a Facebook post.

Sanders has a point about what Kavanaugh thinks about the president’s enforcement of statutes, but he’s very wrong when he suggests Kavanaugh’s opinion is at odds with 200 years of Supreme Court precedent.

What Kanavaugh said

Sanders’ team pointed us to what Kavanaugh wrote in an opinion on Seven-Sky vs. Holder, a 2011 D.C. circuit case that challenged the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act.

In his dissent, Kavanaugh wrote:

"Under the Constitution, the president may decline to enforce a statute that regulates private individuals when the president deems the statute unconstitutional, even if a court has held or would hold the statute constitutional."

Kavanaugh’s remark was a footnote explaining why the court shouldn’t have been considering the case, given that the president might not even enforce the individual mandate. He was citing Justice Antonin Scalia, who made a similar argument in a 2011 concurring opinion.

What the Supreme Court has ruled

The implication of Kavanaugh’s opinion was that a president could supersede the court’s authority on a question of unconstitutionality.

"Kavanaugh makes a strong version of the claim, and it’s probably a minority position among professors, but it’s never been definitively settled by the Supreme Court," said Kermit Roosevelt, constitutional law professor at Penn Law School.

Experts generally agree that a president is not bound by a lower court’s decision when deciding a law is unconstitutional but diverge on whether the Supreme Court has the final say.

However, the Supreme Court has never dealt with this exact question, according to Mark Tushnet, a law professor at Harvard University.

Sanders cited Marbury vs. Madison, one of the most famous Supreme Court cases in history, as evidence that the court, not the president, has the final say. The case states that "it is emphatically the province and the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is."

But according to Saikrishna Prakash, professor at University of Virginia School of Law, the decision is "about whether the court can second-guess Congress. (It can.) It doesn’t say it’s only the duty of the court to decide constitutional questions."

Instead, each branch has a duty to stay faithful to the Constitution, even if it clashes with another branch’s view.

"I will say that there are lots of people who believe the Supreme Court has a special role in constitutional interpretation, and that’s a general view," Prakash said. "There are people like myself who think the court doesn’t have a special role."

Presidents have done it in the past

The idea that a president may not enforce the law sounds odd, but the legal experts we talked to said it was common.

"As a practical matter, there is little doubt that the president sets law enforcement priorities, and that some laws will be vigorously enforced and others will not," said Sarah Duggin, a professor at the Columbus School of Law. "It is also true that at various times in our history, presidents have declined to enforce laws they deemed unconstitutional."

The practice of declining to enforce a law because they find it unconstitutional dates back to the Founding Fathers, and has been done by at least the past six administrations, Prakash said.

When President Thomas Jefferson came into office, he refused to enforce the Sedition Act passed by President John Adams on the basis that it was unconstitutional and pardoned those serving sentences. The issue did not go to court.

In signing the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, President George W. Bush declined to enforce on constitutional grounds a provision mandating that passports display Israel as the place of birth for those born in Jerusalem. When the issue went to the Supreme Court, the court sided with the president.

When signing the National Defense Authorization Act for 2016, Obama wrote that in the event restrictions on the transfer of Guantanamo detainees violated the Constitution, his administration would implement the law in a "manner that avoids the constitutional conflict."

Our ruling

Sanders said Kavanaugh’s belief that a president "may decline to enforce a statute . . . when the president deems the statute unconstitutional" is "contrary to 200 years of Supreme Court precedent."

In practical terms, presidents have indeed declined to enforce statutes they deemed unconstitutional. The question has never come before the court, however. Marbury vs. Madison found that the Supreme Court was the ultimate authority on the law, but law experts disagree on whether that would supercede the president’s own finding of unconstitutionality.

We rate this statement Mostly False.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...rett-kavanaugh-supreme-court-president-power/
 
Last edited:
Why Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh should appeal to both Democrats and Republicans
Eugene Scalia, Opinion contributor | July 23, 2018

636676021545925218-ax157-6ee3-9.jpg

Since Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, we’ve learned he has a strong interest in administrative law. As well he should — his current court, the D.C. Circuit, is the nation’s preeminent court for administrative law cases.

Why should we care about administrative law? And does Kavanaugh's interest in the subject mark him as liberal or conservative?

Administrative law governs the government: The procedures the government must follow, the opportunity it must give the public to speak and be heard when new laws are being written, and the weight that courts must give to federal agencies' decisions — these are essential questions of administrative law.

That is why administrative law is so important: It goes to the heart of our democratic system of government. Important “ad law” cases often concern the public’s ability to provide meaningful input on new rules and the advance notice the public gets before it must comply with a new legal requirement or be subject to penalty for not obeying it.

Administrative law is nonpartisan

Ultimately, administrative law goes to the respective roles played by our elected representatives in Congress and the legions of officials in federal agencies. It concerns the extent to which those unelected agency officials, not senators and congressmen, will write the rules we must live by.

These are profound issues — and they are nonpartisan. In fact, one of the main lessons of administrative law is this: What goes around comes around. A legal argument used in court to topple an Obama administration rule establishes a legal precedent that can be used to stop a Trump administration rule. I learned this in one of the first administrative law cases I handled as a young lawyer: some of my best case authorities for challenging a Clinton administration rule were decisions written by D.C. Circuit judges appointed by Democratic presidents.

The nonpartisan nature of administrative law is reflected in the principle known as “Chevron deference,” which Kavanaugh has expressed reservations about. Named after a 1984 Supreme Court decision, Chevron deference means that if Congress enacts a statute authorizing a federal agency to regulate in a certain area, and the statute does not clearly address a particular question about the agency's regulatory mandate, then courts should defer to — that is, accept — the agency's interpretation of the statute, as long as it’s a reasonable one.

In short, Chevron is a tie-breaker that favors the government. And it shifts to agencies roles that otherwise could be performed by Congress and the courts.

Is the Chevron rule liberal or conservative? Justice Antonin Scalia, my late father, was its foremost proponent for decades, though he began to express reservations in his last years. His successor, Justice Neil Gorsuch, has been a Chevron critic (arguably more so than Kavanaugh).

Or consider this: The Trump administration adopts a new rule, which liberal groups race to court to challenge. In many instances, Chevron deference would be among the Trump lawyers’ most potent arguments, just as it was in the Obama administration. Appointing justices who dislike Chevron deference would make it harder for President Donald Trump to defend his regulations in court.

A concern for Democrats as well as Republicans

Because in ad law what goes around comes around, there are countless other examples of cases and issues that favor no party or ideology. Did President Barack Obama violate the Constitution in 2012 when he appointed three new members of the National Labor Relations Board during what he claimed was a recess of the Senate? The Supreme Court unanimously found the appointments unconstitutional. That decision limits Trump’s ability to make recess appointments today.

The same is true of cost-benefit analysis of regulations. Cost-benefit analysis often is considered a conservative idea, but it has been promoted by every president since Jimmy Carter. In a 2014 dissenting opinion, Kavanaugh criticized the Environmental Protection Agency for not giving any thought to the billions of dollars in costs its rule would impose. The Supreme Court agreed and reversed the D.C. Circuit. Every single justice agreed that, as Justice Elena Kagan said in dissent, “Cost is almost always a relevant — and usually, a highly important — factor in regulation.” Supposed deficiencies in cost-benefit analysis already have been cited as a reason to reject some deregulatory efforts in the Trump administration.

Kavanaugh's interest in administrative law tells us that he is intensely engaged with questions that arise constantly in his current court and at the Supreme Court. His interest tells us that he is thinking about the roles of Congress, the executive branch, and the courts in regulating our daily lives. He's asking questions that concern our liberty and our ability to participate as citizens in the development of the law. Hopefully, these are concerns close to the hearts of Democrats and Republicans alike.

Eugene Scalia is a lawyer in Washington who has handled numerous cases involving administrative law.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opin...ess-public-federal-agencies-column/800668002/
 
I don’t know why libs are trying so hard to block this. Trump appointed a pro abortion judge to the Supreme Court

Evangelicals should be furious, but sadly the Christian Right has been Right first before Christian lately :/
 
Cory Booker: Supporters Of Judge Kavanaugh Are "Complicit" In "Evil"
Posted By Tim Hains | July 25, 2018



Flanked by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Cory Booker speaks out against President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.

"You are either complicit to that evil, you are either contributing to a wrong or you are fighting against it," Booker said.


SEN. CORY BOOKER: There is so much at stake here, this has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with who we are as moral people. I'm not here just to tell folks what they already know, I'm here to call on folk to understand that in the moral moment, there is no neutral. In a moral moment, there are no bystanders.

PERSON IN CROWD: That's right.

BOOKER: You are either complicit to that evil, you are either contributing to a wrong or you are fighting against it.

There is a saying about one of the Psalms that says, "Yea, though we walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death." We are walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. That doesn't say I sit in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I'm watching on the sidelines in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

PERSON IN CROWD: Hell no!

BOOKER: It says I'm walking through in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. It says I am taking agency, I am going to make it through this crisis. When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. He has shown us who he is.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/v...of_judge_kavanaugh_are_complicit_in_evil.html
 
Cornyn blasts Booker for calling Kavanaugh supporters 'complicit in evil'
by Elise Viebeck | July 25, 2018



Sen. Cory Booker’s statement that supporters of Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh are “complicit” in “evil” drew criticism from senior Republicans who called the New Jersey Democrat’s comment absurd and inappropriate.

“It’s hard to take statements like that seriously,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said Wednesday in a floor speech. “To me, that’s completely unhinged and detached from any reality.”

Cornyn advised Democrats who are “engaged in this kind of superheated rhetoric” to “get a grip, get a grip.”

Booker’s comment at a news conference Tuesday could further inflame debate over Kavanaugh as red-state Democrats face pressure to support President Trump’s second Supreme Court pick.

Booker described the fight over Trump’s nominee as a battle between right and wrong in which “there is no neutral.”

“I’m here to call on folk to understand that in the moral moment there is no neutral,” Booker said, as shown in a video clip posted on YouTube by the Republican National Committee. “In a moral moment there is no bystanders. You are either complicit in the evil, you are either contributing to the wrong, or you are fighting against it.”

Booker continued with a reference to Psalm 23: “We are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. But that doesn’t say, ‘Though I sit in the valley of the shadow of death.’ It doesn’t say that I’m watching on the sidelines of the valley of the shadow of death. … It says I am taking agency, that I am going to make it through this crisis.”

Cornyn called Booker’s statements “pretty apocalyptic.”

“What in the world? [Booker] needs to get a grip,” he said in a brief interview. “Everybody’s trying to outdo everybody else.”

Booker’s spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

QIWKN4DYM4ZKTHPHMORNB4RDOA.jpg

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said Booker was resorting to “Armageddon-style rhetoric.”

“This is really quite alarming rhetoric,” Hatch tweeted Tuesday. “Just a few weeks in and it’s already startlingly clear that Senate Democrats will not challenge Kavanaugh on substance (because they won’t land a blow).”



Republicans want to confirm Kavanaugh before October, when the new Supreme Court term begins. Democrats have made a point of asking to review all documents from his time as a staffer in the George W. Bush White House and as a deputy to independent counsel Kenneth Starr, even if that means delaying the process.

It remains unclear how several key senators will vote, including Democrats Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.) and Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), who represent states where majorities supported Trump in 2016. The three voted for Neil M. Gorsuch’s Supreme Court confirmation last year.

Donnelly and Manchin have announced they will meet one-on-one with Kavanaugh in the coming days, even as top Democrats refuse to participate in the custom until they resolve the dispute over the review of documents from Kavanaugh’s career.

The Democratic candidate for Senate in Tennessee, former governor Phil Bredesen, tweeted Wednesday that “someone has to step up and start putting an end to partisan bickering and rancor” over the Supreme Court nominee.

“We Democrats have a chance to show leadership in this with Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination,” he tweeted. “Democrats should meet with him, make an assessment, and vote their conscience and not a party line.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2018/07/25/get-a-grip-republicans-seize-on-booker-comment-that-kavanaugh-supporters-are-complicit-in-evil/
 
Last edited:
You can always count on Booker to crank up the drama to a silly degree, and make his party look insane.

Way to go, Book!
 
Cornyn blasts Booker for calling Kavanaugh supporters 'complicit in evil'
by Elise Viebeck | July 25, 2018



Sen. Cory Booker’s statement that supporters of Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh are “complicit” in “evil” drew criticism from senior Republicans who called the New Jersey Democrat’s comment absurd and inappropriate.

“It’s hard to take statements like that seriously,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said Wednesday in a floor speech. “To me, that’s completely unhinged and detached from any reality.”

Cornyn advised Democrats who are “engaged in this kind of superheated rhetoric” to “get a grip, get a grip.”

Booker’s comment at a news conference Tuesday could further inflame debate over Kavanaugh as red-state Democrats face pressure to support President Trump’s second Supreme Court pick.

Booker described the fight over Trump’s nominee as a battle between right and wrong in which “there is no neutral.”

“I’m here to call on folk to understand that in the moral moment there is no neutral,” Booker said, as shown in a video clip posted on YouTube by the Republican National Committee. “In a moral moment there is no bystanders. You are either complicit in the evil, you are either contributing to the wrong, or you are fighting against it.”

Booker continued with a reference to Psalm 23: “We are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. But that doesn’t say, ‘Though I sit in the valley of the shadow of death.’ It doesn’t say that I’m watching on the sidelines of the valley of the shadow of death. … It says I am taking agency, that I am going to make it through this crisis.”

Cornyn called Booker’s statements “pretty apocalyptic.”

“What in the world? [Booker] needs to get a grip,” he said in a brief interview. “Everybody’s trying to outdo everybody else.”

Booker’s spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

QIWKN4DYM4ZKTHPHMORNB4RDOA.jpg

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said Booker was resorting to “Armageddon-style rhetoric.”

“This is really quite alarming rhetoric,” Hatch tweeted Tuesday. “Just a few weeks in and it’s already startlingly clear that Senate Democrats will not challenge Kavanaugh on substance (because they won’t land a blow).”



Republicans want to confirm Kavanaugh before October, when the new Supreme Court term begins. Democrats have made a point of asking to review all documents from his time as a staffer in the George W. Bush White House and as a deputy to independent counsel Kenneth Starr, even if that means delaying the process.

It remains unclear how several key senators will vote, including Democrats Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.) and Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), who represent states where majorities supported Trump in 2016. The three voted for Neil M. Gorsuch’s Supreme Court confirmation last year.

Donnelly and Manchin have announced they will meet one-on-one with Kavanaugh in the coming days, even as top Democrats refuse to participate in the custom until they resolve the dispute over the review of documents from Kavanaugh’s career.

The Democratic candidate for Senate in Tennessee, former governor Phil Bredesen, tweeted Wednesday that “someone has to step up and start putting an end to partisan bickering and rancor” over the Supreme Court nominee.

“We Democrats have a chance to show leadership in this with Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination,” he tweeted. “Democrats should meet with him, make an assessment, and vote their conscience and not a party line.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2018/07/25/get-a-grip-republicans-seize-on-booker-comment-that-kavanaugh-supporters-are-complicit-in-evil/


Corey Booker is the next Adolf Hitler.
 
You can always count on Booker to crank up the drama to a silly degree, and make his party look insane.

Way to go, Book!

Corey Booker is the next Adolf Hitler.

The real problem with drama queens currently howling wolf on Capitol Hill is that if we ever get a truly terrible judicial nomination, people aren't going to give a shit anymore, since all the most outrageous labels in the bag have already been unsuccessfully applied to the good judges.

I highly doubt all the idiots who tries to bork judge Gorsuch and judge Kavanaugh understands that.
 
Inside Brett Kavanaugh’s finances: Nominee dwells among elite but hasn’t chased riches
by Amy Brittain | August 9, 2018​

QDEN6OUR2UI6RPGVTWIRY6CMHA.jpg


In front of a law-school crowd in 2015, Brett M. Kavanaugh mentioned the success of a younger attorney who worked as his deputy in the White House and became the general counsel of Facebook in 2008. Kavanaugh, who was a federal appeals court judge at the time, had never heard of the company.

“That turned out to be a really good move,” Kavanaugh said, chuckling. “And I am committed to public service, as I said, but I do spend some time reading Robert Frost, ‘The Road Not Taken.’ ”

That path was the pursuit of riches in the private sector. In 2001, he left a private firm to join the White House, a move that slashed his salary by more than half but set him on a path toward the judicial branch — and now, to the peak of his profession as a nominee for the Supreme Court.

He has in many ways stayed true to his intent, following the Jesuit mantra of service above self instilled in him by the elite Catholic high school he attended in suburban Washington volunteering his time by feeding the homeless and coaching girls basketball.

His path has left him living a lifestyle on the outer edge of his means, mingling with the 1 percent social circles in a Chevy Chase neighborhood that has among the highest median incomes in the country.

Kavanaugh has reported credit card debts that exceeded $15,000 for six of his 12 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. At the end of 2016, those debts ranged from $45,000 to $150,000 and were spread among three credit cards, before being paid off sometime last year. A White House spokesman has said that Washington Nationals baseball tickets and home improvement costs accounted for those debts but has not provided a detailed breakdown. The spokesman told The Washington Post that Kavanaugh’s friends reimbursed him for their share of the baseball tickets.

“There was never a hint of anything irresponsible about anything that he did,” said Bob Bittman, a Washington lawyer who worked with Kavanaugh in the Kenneth W. Starr-led independent counsel’s office. “But apparently he was in debt. I believe it was temporary or there was a plan to get out of it, or he was going to be repaid by friends. He’s not the type of guy who does things to keep up with the Joneses.”

The same year he accumulated the highest debts of his judicial tenure, Kavanaugh also joined the Chevy Chase Club — an elite country club that counts Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. among its members and, as of 2017, required a $92,000 initiation fee and annual dues of more than $9,000.

“It’s a place where your children can be on the swim team, learn to play tennis and play in an ice hockey league. It’s a family-focused environment,” said Helgi Walker, a Washington lawyer and friend of Kavanaugh’s who also belongs to the club.

When asked about the social status of belonging to such a club, she quipped about a Georgetown institution known for high-powered customers such as Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner: “If you want to see and be seen, you would go to Cafe Milano, not a country club.”

Kavanaugh declined to be interviewed for this article. He did not respond to questions about his finances or, in the case of the baseball tickets, answer why he would accumulate high-interest debt for friends.

A financial statement that was filed last month as part of the Senate vetting process reveals that Kavanaugh’s net worth, the calculation of what an individual owns minus debts, is around $942,000. The threshold for the top 1 percent of net worth in the United States is more than $10 million, according to recent survey data from the Federal Reserve.

Kavanaugh has government retirement accounts worth about $480,000 and more than $400,000 in equity in his home, which has a mortgage of $815,000.

He holds roughly $27,000 in cash accounts and drives a Jeep Grand Cherokee, which he values at $25,000.

The personal finances of Supreme Court nominees regularly come under scrutiny during the congressional vetting process, which requires financial disclosure forms and net-value statements that list debts and assets. In the cases of wealthy jurists, those with directly held stocks might face the choice of recusing themselves from cases in which their finances could pose conflicts or shedding stocks to avoid those ethical concerns.

In Kavanaugh’s case, the forms are revealing for another reason: They offer a glimpse into personal finances that have appeared shaky at times, including a recent year when Kavanaugh’s reported debt ranges could have exceeded what he had available in high-liquidity assets such as money-market or cash accounts.

If confirmed, Kavanaugh would become the justice with the fewest reportable assets, by a long shot. The last justice to enter the court with similar finances was Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who accumulated credit card debt because of a dental health issue. She later improved her financial well-being with the publication of a memoir that netted her a publisher’s advance of more than $1 million and substantial royalties.

The issue of pay for the judicial branch has been a heated topic at times. After Roberts joined the Supreme Court, he quipped publicly about the issue.

“The dramatic erosion of judicial compensation will inevitably result in a decline in the quality of persons willing to accept a lifetime appointment as a federal judge,” Roberts wrote in his annual report on the federal judiciary in 2007.

By the nation’s standards, Kavanaugh is decidedly wealthy, with an annual salary of $220,000 that reaches far beyond the median income for a typical U.S. household. He also has resources that other families may not — familial wealth and the option, if needed, to forgo his government job and return to private practice. Kavanaugh’s father drew a hefty salary working for a cosmetics trade group and received a $13 million payout in 2005, as first reported by the New York Times.

Even as a young man, there were signs of privilege. He attended the exclusive Georgetown Preparatory School. His parents arranged for him to secure a junior membership at the Congressional Country Club in 1986, when he was still in college. He paid to upgrade it to a full membership in 2000 and held that membership until 2017, when he had already switched to the Chevy Chase Club.

“It was expensive for him to make the change,” Bittman said. “He was already a member of a country club, and when you leave, you don’t get your money back. He did that because it’s a few blocks from his house and the kids were going there and enjoying it.”

As part of the congressional vetting process, Kavanaugh was asked whether he had ever belonged to a club that engaged in discriminatory practices. Kavanaugh wrote, “Years before I became a member of the Congressional Country Club and the Chevy Chase Club, it is my understanding that those clubs, like most similar clubs around the country, may have excluded members on discriminatory bases that should not have been acceptable to people then and would not be acceptable now.”

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who also attended Georgetown Prep and clerked for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, reports assets worth at least 55 times that of Kavanaugh. The comparison does not include houses or government retirement accounts, which are not reported on the justices’ yearly disclosures. Gorsuch, at 50, is three years younger than Kavanaugh but spent more time earning wealth in private practice — including a stint as partner at a law firm for more than seven years.

“You realize very early on in my industry that people are vastly different with their approaches to money,” said Jeff Porter, a chief investment officer at Sullivan Bruyette Speros & Blayney, a financial planning firm in McLean, Va., who had no direct knowledge of Kavanaugh’s debts and spoke to The Post about personal finance in general. “Certainly living in the D.C. area there is a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentality. People who you may think are quite wealthy based on their spending or how they carry themselves are not actually that wealthy. And it all comes down to, are you continually saving?”

Kavanaugh worked in the solicitor general’s office in the early 1990s and spent two short stints at Kirkland & Ellis, a private law firm. He was unmarried and drew a yearly salary in the $200,000s, according to a person with knowledge of Kavanaugh’s finances who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private figure.

Several friends of Kavanaugh described him as frugal.

“He was never a guy who was very concerned about money,” said Scott McCaleb, a childhood friend. “And I don’t mean that in the way that he’s a child of privilege. Certainly his parents have means, but it’s just not the way that he thought.”

When he returned to government service, this time in the George W. Bush White House in 2001, he took a pay cut of more than half. At the time, a burst pipe had left the 36-year-old lawyer with wet belongings and a flooded apartment. So he dialed up Bittman, an old colleague from his days in the independent counsel’s office.

“Brett had just been to a party at my house and had seen that it was a nice house and that I didn’t have any roommates,” recalled Bittman, who lived in Maryland in single-family home in Chevy Chase. “He asked if he could join me there.”

Kavanaugh moved into a spare bedroom and paid monthly rent during the first few months of his job at the White House.

“I almost never saw him. He was working all the time,” Bittman said. “Sometimes I would see remnants of pizza boxes.”

At the same time, as Kavanaugh established his legal and family reputation, he went about adopting the trappings of a 1-percenter — and accumulating large amounts of debt in the process.

When he was nominated by Bush to the D.C. Circuit judgeship in 2003, Kavanaugh reported no debts, according to a net-worth statement filed with the Senate Judiciary Committee. After he married Ashley Estes, he filed an updated statement in 2005 that reflected $25,000 in credit card debt.

Kavanaugh was confirmed as a federal appeals judge in 2006 — earning a salary of $175,000 at the time. He has supplemented his income by teaching law courses, which brings in $27,000 a year.

The same year he became a judge, Kavanaugh and his wife purchased a $1.2 million home in the Village of Chevy Chase Section 5 — a small geographical area in Maryland with a 2010 census count of 658 residents.

Within Montgomery County, it takes a $650,000 household income to make it into the 1 percent. Kavanaugh and his wife — who draws a $66,000 salary as the town manager — make less than half of what it would take to meet that threshold.

“Most of the families are two-income families,” said Monica Mastal, a real estate agent whose daughter plays on a basketball team that Kavanaugh coaches. “To live here, it is expensive. Not everybody here earns a million dollars, even if that is the perception.”

The Kavanaugh family received an income boost of at least $150,000 in 2014; federal judges across the country received back pay for delayed cost-of-living increases, according to the person familiar with the judge’s finances.

The year after receiving the back pay, Kavanaugh’s wife returned to the workforce after four years spent at home taking care of their two daughters. The person familiar with Kavanaugh’s finances said that the back pay and the second source of income helped stabilize the Kavanaugh family’s financial health, especially with private-school expenses.

Both daughters, Margaret and Liza, attend the private Blessed Sacrament School, where tuition costs $10,275 per child each year. The Kavanaughs plan to keep their daughters in private education through 12th grade, the person said.

Despite living in a top public school district, Kavanaugh views the price tag of a Catholic education as a necessary expense, those close to the family said. He has publicly said that his Catholic school upbringing played a significant role in shaping his values.

The real-life subject of Kavanaugh’s Frost metaphor is Ted Ullyot, the former White House aide under Kavanaugh who went on to earn millions as the general counsel for Facebook.

Ullyot, when asked in a recent interview, seemed surprised that Kavanaugh had mentioned him in the context of comparing career paths.

“He’s never shown any trace of envy or anything like that,” said Ullyot, who is now a Silicon Valley investor. “Any lawyer would give anything to be in his position now. That’s the highest honor.”

 
It’s fairly simple. Kagan and Sotomayor had all their writings scrutinized. So should he. That’s the precedent now.
 
Hasn’t Bret been groomed thru all the Koch Brothers backed institutions?

I’m certain he has and because of that Americans shouldn’t want him
 
Is anyone surprised? These corrupt pieces of shit could care less about good governance or democratic values.

38844026_10156641455650908_6650175886219804672_n.jpg




Kind of reminds me of how the Republicans screeched and bitched about the lack of debate and access to the Affordable Care Act and then....
fair-hearing-trump-care-vs-obamacare-in-the-senate-obamacare-23193199.png

57a.jpg



There is literally only one American party that cares at all about governing. Anyone who votes for these shameless hypocrites is a shameless hypocrite themselves.
 
Back
Top