Kavanaugh SCOTUS hearings

[GMDino]

So Mr. Kavanaugh wasn't exactly, totally smooth yesterday when he had to answer a few questions:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/leahy-trips-kavanaugh-up-with-questions-about-allegedly-stolen-emails

Quote:Leahy Trips Kavanaugh Up With Questions About Allegedly Stolen Emails

At Wednesday’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) threw Brett Kavanaugh off his flow of so far providing steady and confident answers to senators’ questions with a line of inquiry about allegations that emails were stolen from Leahy’s office during the confirmation wars of the George W. Bush administration.

Kavanaugh at the time was involved in the judicial confirmation process for the White House, and on Wednesday Leahy zeroed in on testimony Kavanaugh later gave during his confirmation to a lower court judgeship.


Leahy presented Kavanaugh with claims the judge made during the mid-2000s confirmation hearings about never receiving the stolen emails. Kavanaugh said that his comments then were 100 percent accurate.


Leahy asked him specifically about information provided to him by Manny Miranda, then a Republican staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee, about what senators were planning to ask Bush’s judicial nominees. Miranda, a Senate investigation revealed, had been covertly reading Democratic staffers emails and leaking them to right-wing outlets.


Kavanaugh explained that broadly, as part of the judicial confirmation process, the White House was in contact with the offices of senators on both sides of the aisle, and sought to be aware of what interested those senators regarding the nominees.


Leahy then offered Kavanaugh an email Miranda sent Kavanaugh in July 2002 indicating that Leahy’s office was interested in a nominee’s financial ties to certain groups. Leahy asked Kavanaugh if he was aware that that information was coming from emails stolen from Leahy.

Kavanaugh said that the information came from the common practice of hearing about senators’ interest through discussions on the Hill.


Leahy didn’t lay off, and badgered Kavanaugh about the specifics of the information offered by Miranda, while claiming that it came from private emails sent to Leahy the night before.



Kavanaugh appeared confused and asked Leahy to point him to relevant portions of the Miranda email in front of him. Leahy appeared to allude to other emails that might have shown Miranda providing stolen information to Kavanaugh.


Kavanugh continued to waffle around Leahy’s questions, which included inquiries about whether he met Miranda in locations other than the White House or the Capitol.


Leahy then asked Kavanaugh if he would be surprised if there was an email showing that he got information from somebody’s spying. Kavanaugh asked if such an email exists, prompting Leahy to coyly allude to the thousands of Kavanaugh documents that have been deemed committee confidential — meaning they can’t be shared publicly.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley jumped in at this point, his voice raised, to defend his handling of the document production, and had a back-and-forth with Leahy about the getting permission to use committee confidential materials during the hearings.


At one point, Leahy claimed that there were confidential documents related to this line of inquiry and that he hoped to make them public for the next round of questioning.


Through it all, Kavanaugh insisted that he did not mislead the committee in his previous testimony, despite Leahy’s insinuations.


“That testimony up there is true — 100 percent,” Kavanaugh said.

Yeah...those unreleased documents are hiding something.

Continuing...

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/05/kavanaugh-mueller-probe-hearings-809115

Quote:Kavanaugh stumbles when grilled on whether he discussed Mueller probe


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Nearly 12 hours into Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearing, Kamala Harris opened with a tantalizing query: Has the Supreme Court nominee ever discussed Robert Mueller’s probe with a lawyer at Kasowitz Benson & Torres, President Donald Trump’s longtime law firm?


“Be sure about your answer, sir,” Harris asked Kavanaugh. Trump’s high court pick appeared nonplussed, responding that “I’m not sure I know everyone who works at that law firm,” but the California Democrat – a veteran prosecutor known for her tenacious questioning and high on her party’s 2020 presidential short lists — would not let up.

“How can you not remember whether you’ve had a conversation about Robert Mueller or his investigation with anyone at that law firm?” Harris asked, suggesting that Kavanaugh was “thinking of someone and you don’t want to tell us.”


The moment was striking, one of the Democratic Party’s newest leading lights taking on a well-respected Trump nominee with roots in hard-knuckle GOP politics. But Harris moved on from the question within minutes, turning what seemed like a chance to get Kavanaugh on the ropes into a mystery — and one with a sizable downside risk.


Harris offered no further context for her line of questioning with Kavanaugh, which suggested that he may have discussed an investigation affecting Trump with Trump-connected lawyers but lacked any solid proof.

The only explanation for the back-and-forth came from a Democratic aide speaking on condition of anonymity, who said Wednesday night that some in the party "have reason to believe that a conversation happened and are continuing to pursue it."


If tangible evidence of that conversation doesn’t emerge, Harris and fellow Democrats are likely to face serious questions of their own from the GOP about whether their attempt to pin down Kavanaugh was little more than a game of gotcha.

One Republican, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, leapt to the judge’s defense after Harris began her opaque but dogged questions, noting that the vast number of lawyers he’d normally be interacting with made the question difficult to answer.


Marc Kasowitz, founder of the Kasowitz firm, briefly represented Trump in the Mueller investigation last year before bowing out and has continued to represent the president in a defamation lawsuit filed against him by former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos. The firm has represented Trump in multiple other cases over the past decade.


And it’s a vast firm, with more than 250 lawyers on staff whom Harris may have been referring to. More clues may emerge as soon as next week, with the California Democrat saying during the hearing that she would follow up on the matter in the form of written questions for Kavanaugh.


Those questions are due to the committee on Monday.

The video of that one is better.  He heard the names Mueller and Trump in the same sentence and his talky box stopped working while his thinking cap started smoking looking for a legalese answer to avoid it.