Would you support a Supreme Court nominee if a Senator asked the Attorney General to investigate that person for perjury?
What if that same nominee thought a president should be free from virtually any scrutiny while in office?
Both are part of Brett Kavanaugh’s record.
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Kavanaugh worked in the Bush White House. Later, he testified at his confirmation hearing to become a federal judge and was asked about his role in the administration’s development of policies involving torture and treatment of detainees. He denied all knowledge and was confirmed
The next year, NPR reports came out which indicated Kavanaugh was indeed aware of these policies. Senator Durbin said “[h]e had to know he was misleading me and the committee and the people who were following this controversial nomination.”
Senator Leahy went further.
Leahy sent a letter to AG Alberto Gonzales asking him to investigate whether Kavanaugh lied.
“False testimony by any witness is troubling and undermines the Senate’s ability to fulfill its constitutional duties on behalf of the American people” he wrote
In addition to possibly committing perjury, Kavanaugh has voiced positions about the extent of presidential power which seem to elevate the president almost to a monarch rather than the head of one co-equal branch of government with Congress and the judiciary.
A recent story on Kavanaugh indicates he questioned the outcome of the unanimous Supreme Court decision in the Watergate case that forced Nixon to hand over Oval Office recordings and led to his resignation.
There is also a Minnesota Law Review article wherein he muses that “criminal investigations and prosecutions of the president” should be halted until his term is finished.
Do we really believe that we should allow a president to get off scot-free?
Of course, there are also significant policy reasons to oppose Kavanaugh as well, such as his position on refusing to allow a teenager in government detention to have an abortion.
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Imagine if a sitting Supreme Court Justice was involved in discussions about whether the US can imprison people
Without a trial
Without lawyers
And torture them-
And then lied about it
During his own confirmation hearing
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When Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to become a judge in 2006, he was asked about his work in the Bush administration. Specifically he was questioned about the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. He said he was “not involved in the questions about..detention of combatants.”
Problem is, a year later it came out that he WAS involved in some of these arguments.
We first thought Dilley isn’t inherently evil-just a large, emotionless machine running on bureaucratic inertia. Now we learn that for some, that’s not true. For them, Dilley is a torture chamber, built to cause the most extraordinary pain and exert devastating control over women
We have yet to see a single drug dealer, gang member or vandal bent on a life of crime in the US. That’s what they’ve risked their lives to escape, not what they intended to bring to America. And yet we expend enormous resources to keep these victims from victimizing us.
Men working at Dilley have to tread carefully, because many of their clients’ pains and indignities stem from their oppressed relationships with the men in their lives: abusive husbands, gang members, drunken relatives, indifferent police and government, and snakeheads.
It is therefore no surprise that some of the women receiving Credible Fear Interview preparation are reluctant to have a man sitting in on their prep team, are reluctant to reveal painful intimacies to men whose supportive attitudes and good will may seem foreign to them.
We are now a coalition of 40+ large law firms and non-profit organizations, 6,000+ volunteer lawyers across the country, 2,000+ translators, social services providers, and others, all working together to address not only the immediate family separation crisis and asylum issues.
Last week, we launched our remote legal services project, drafting five "Request for Reinterview" briefs in under 12 hours for mothers who are separated and detained. This week, we are working to help drafting of as many as 350 Motions for Reconsideration for separated parents.
While most of us spent the 4th of July with our families, intrepid Lawyers for Good Government volunteer attorney Veronica Walther was in Texas helping women apply for asylum.
Here is part of her harrowing report /2
I spent all of this Independence Day at #KarnesResidentialCenter Yes, it's a holiday but these women and children do not get a day off from detention so we do not take a day off from helping. There is more than enough work to do. /3