David Brock on NBC: “I used to know Brett Kavanaugh pretty well. And,
when I think of Brett now, in the midst of his hearings for a lifetime
appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court,
all I can think of is the old "Aesop's Fables" adage: "A man is known by
the company he keeps." And that's why I want to tell any senator who
cares about our democracy: Vote no. Twenty years ago, when I was a
conservative movement stalwart, I got to know Brett Kavanaugh both
professionally and personally. Brett actually makes a cameo appearance
in my memoir of my time in the GOP, "Blinded By The Right." I describe
him at a party full of zealous young conservatives gathered to watch
President Bill Clinton's 1998 State of the Union address — just weeks
after the story of his affair with a White House intern had broken. When
the TV camera panned to Hillary Clinton, I saw Brett — at the time a
key lieutenant of Ken Starr, the independent counsel investigating
various Clinton scandals — mouth the word "bitch."
But there's a lot
more to know about Kavanaugh than just his Pavlovian response to
Hillary's image. Brett and I were part of a close circle of cold,
cynical and ambitious hard-right operatives being groomed by GOP elders
for much bigger roles in politics, government and media. And it’s those
controversial associations that should give members of the Senate and
the American public serious pause.
Call it Kavanaugh's cabal: There
was his colleague on the Starr investigation, Alex Azar, now the
Secretary of Health and Human Services. Mark Paoletta is now chief
counsel to Vice President Mike Pence; House anti-Clinton gumshoe Barbara
Comstock is now a Republican member of Congress. Future Fox News
personalities Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson were there with Ann
Coulter, now a best-selling author, and internet provocateur Matt
Drudge.
At one time or another, each of them partied at my
Georgetown townhouse amid much booze and a thick air of cigar smoke. In a
rough division of labor, Kavanaugh played the role of lawyer — one of
the sharp young minds recruited by the Federalist Society to infiltrate
the federal judiciary with true believers. Through that network,
Kavanaugh was mentored by D.C. Appeals Court Judge Laurence Silberman,
known among his colleagues for planting leaks in the press for partisan
advantage.
When, as I came to know, Kavanaugh took on the role of
designated leaker to the press of sensitive information from Starr's
operation, we all laughed that Larry had taught him well. (Of course,
that sort of political opportunism by a prosecutor is at best unethical,
if not illegal.)
Another compatriot was George Conway (now
Kellyanne's husband), who led a secretive group of right-wing lawyers —
we called them "the elves" — who worked behind the scenes directing the
litigation team of Paula Jones, who had sued Clinton for sexual
harassment. I knew then that information was flowing quietly from the
Jones team via Conway to Starr's office — and also that Conway's go-to
man was none other than Brett Kavanaugh.
That critical flow of
inside information allowed Starr, in effect, to set a perjury trap for
Clinton, laying the foundation for a crazed national political crisis
and an unjust impeachment over a consensual affair.
But the cabal's
godfather was Ted Olson, the then-future solicitor general for George W.
Bush and now a sainted figure of the GOP establishment (and of some
liberals for his role in legalizing same-sex marriage). Olson had a
largely hidden role as a consigliere to the "Arkansas Project" — a
multi-million dollar dirt-digging operation on the Clintons, funded by
the eccentric right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife and run
through The American Spectator magazine, where I worked at the time.
Both Ted and Brett had what one could only be called an unhealthy
obsession with the Clintons — especially Hillary. While Ted was pushing
through the Arkansas Project conspiracy theories claiming that Clinton
White House lawyer and Hillary friend Vincent Foster was murdered (he
committed suicide), Brett was costing taxpayers millions by pedaling the
same garbage at Starr's office.
A detailed analysis of Kavanaugh's own notes from the Starr Investigation reveals he was cherry-picking random bits of information from the Starr investigation — as well as the multiple previous investigations — attempting vainly to legitimize wild right-wing conspiracies. For years he chased down each one of them without regard to the emotional cost to Foster’s family and friends, or even common decency.
Kavanaugh was not a dispassionate finder of
fact but rather an engineer of a political smear campaign. And after
decades of that, he expects people to believe he's changed his stripes.
Like millions of Americans this week, I tuned into Kavanaugh's hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee with great interest. In his opening statement and subsequent testimony, Kavanaugh presented himself as a "neutral and impartial arbiter" of the law. Judges, he said, were not players but akin to umpires — objectively calling balls and strikes. Again and again, he stressed his "independence" from partisan political influences.
But I don't need to see any documents to tell you who
Kavanaugh is — because I've known him for years. And I'll leave it to
all the lawyers to parse Kavanaugh's views on everything from privacy
rights to gun rights.
