(February 12, 1965 in Washington, D.C.) is a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, having been nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2018, replacing Justice Anthony Kennedy. He formerly served as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Kavanaugh is thought to be pro-life and dissented from a decision that required the Trump Administration to be complicit in granting a right to an abortion by an illegal alien 17-year-old girl.
Kavanaugh is conservative, opposed to illegal immigration, and has written several opinions supporting an America First philosophy.[1][2][3] He is also a strong opponent of the administrative state,[4][5] and he has made conservative rulings on social issues such as Second Amendment rights.[6][7][8][9] Some conservatives believe that he relies too much on faulty court precedents[10] and have criticized a ruling that was too supportive of Obamacare.[11] The Never Trump movement is more divided. Some Never-Tumpers, such as David French, assert that a Justice Kavanaugh would have a judicial philosophy closer to that of Roberts or Kennedy than Alito or Scalia.[12] Others, such as Peter Wehner and Ben Sasse, have praised Kavanaugh, although his appointment is unlikely to prompt them to start supporting President Trump.[13][14] Democrats and the Left, on the other hand, had a completely hysterical reaction to his nomination because he is not a judicial activist.[15]
A “Controlled Judge” Who Aided In Cover-Up Of Vince Foster Case?
Kavanaugh was the independent assistant attorney (IAA) in charge of the final investigation in the Vince Foster case. Both conservative and liberal media outlets have failed to cover the information that was scattered throughout the report even to this day. They have been just as complicit as was Kavanaugh in the coverup of what was clearly the murder of Vince Foster. I’m not the only one saying it. This video titled The Vince Foster Cover-up: The FBI and The Press is a must view and demonstrates why Kavanaugh is part of the Clinton swamp people were promised that Trump would drain. And don’t think Trump doesn’t know this.
Twenty-nine year old Brett Kavanaugh replaced Miguel Rodriguez when he resigned from Kenneth Starr’s Office of Independent Counsel. Associate Independent Counsel Rodriguez, an experienced prosecutor, thought he “was scoring big points” for Ken Starr investigating the death of Vince Foster, President Bill Clinton’s deputy White House counsel. Rodriguez’s assistant Lucia Rambusch thought they “would be getting pats on the back” for uncovering evidence Foster had been murdered. Instead, according to Deputy Independent Counsel Hickman Ewing’s notes, Rodriguez said that Deputy Independent Counsel Mark Tuohey “cancelled everything [he] was doing” and “undermined everything [he] had done.”
Kavanaugh sided with the Democrat Tuohey in opposing efforts by Rodriguez to uncover the truth. For what it’s worth, Tuohey is married to Marty Daley, the sister of Barack Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Bill Daley, and the former Democratic mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley. Their father was the powerful Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley. Kavanaugh was willing to do what Tuohey expected to achieve the desired result. Rodriguez told Reed Irvine, the deceased former chairman and founder of Accuracy in Media, that “the young aspiring people, who I used to work with back in that office will say and do what they have to, to move up the ladder.”
Ewing wrote in his notes, “FBI refused to coop. w/ [Miguel Rodriguez] on [Vince Foster] death.” Rodriguez told Irvine the same FBI agents that did the Fiske investigation were working in Starr’s office and they hid photographic evidence, intimidated witnesses, and threatened him.
On March 10, 1995, four days after Rodriguez’s resignation was effective, an FBI agent sent a memorandum to Kavanaugh that was copied to Tuohey. The memo presented a chronology: “(16:15-16:30) Patrick Knowlton describes a small brown foreign car with Arkansas license plates in the Ft. Marcy parking lot. Knowlton also described a suit jacket and a briefcase inside this car.”
The memo failed to mention that Knowlton was unwavering that the car he saw was not Foster’s 1989 gray Honda. The Arkansas license plate seen by Knowlton was used to make it appear that he saw Foster’s car. Although it stated that Knowlton saw a brown car, it suppressed the fact that Knowlton was certain the car was an early 80s model and not a 1989. The chronology continued: “(17:00 +/-) Judy Doody identifies Foster’s vehicle parked in the Ft. Marcy parking lot.” This false statement was used to make it appear Foster’s car was in the parking lot when Foster was dead.
In an FBI interview, Doody, “noted the only vehicle in the parking area was a relatively old (mid-1980s) Honda, possibly a Honda Accord, either tan or dark in color.” Her companion Mark Feist told the FBI “he observed a vehicle, possibly a station wagon or ‘hatchback’ model, brownish in color.” They did not describe Foster’s 1989 gray Honda. On October 22, 1995, the London Sunday Telegraph reported the FBI had inaccurately reported what Knowlton told them he had seen at Fort Marcy Park.
“They went over it about 20 times, telling me that this was Foster’s car,” said Knowlton. “But I was quite adamant about it. I saw what I saw, and I wasn’t going to change my story…”
The article also reported that Knowlton and two other witnesses [Judy Doody and Mark Feist] had not been subpoenaed to testify before the Whitewater grand jury.
Four days after the Telegraph article was published, Thursday morning, October 26, 1995, Knowlton was served a subpoena to testify before the Washington, D.C. federal grand jury on the following Wednesday, November 1, 1995. FBI Special Agent Russell Bransford, assigned to Starr’s Office of Independent Counsel, personally served the subpoena at Knowlton’s home.
The name of John D. Bates, Deputy Independent Counsel, appeared on the front of the subpoena. The name of Brett M. Kavanaugh, Associate Counsel, was on the back. Harassment of witness Patrick Knowlton began later that same evening.
For several days prior to his grand jury appearance Knowlton was intimidated and harassed on the street and in his home by dozens of men, including FBI agent Bransford. Kavanaugh interrogated Knowlton before the grand jurors and had little interest in what he witnessed at Fort Marcy Park. Kavanaugh’s questions seemed designed to make Knowlton appear to be homosexual and someone seeking publicity.
Toward the end of the questioning Kavanaugh said, “tell us about the alleged harassment.” Knowlton responded that it “was not alleged, it happened.” He then repeatedly asked Kavanaugh who sent FBI agent Bransford to his home. Twice Kavanaugh responded that they were not there to answer Knowlton’s questions. When Knowlton asked a third time, Bates, who had been seated behind Knowlton said that they (“we”) sent Bransford.
Knowlton then explained the harassment he received from Bransford and summarized the intimidation from the previous Thursday and Friday. He was angry that Kavanaugh and Bates were not interested.
At the end of his testimony Kavanaugh asked Knowlton a series of questions about a man he had seen in a blue-gray sedan at the park, including one question of a graphic sexual nature. Starr’s office has denied Kavanaugh asked any question about “genitals,” but Knowlton has repeatedly said that one of the questions Kavanaugh asked with regard to the suspicious looking man he saw in a car at the Fort Marcy parking lot was, “Did he touch your genitals?
In 1997, Kavanaugh concluded his investigation of Foster’s death and the Office of Independent Counsel Report was released on October 10. The Report stated, “According to the reports of their interviews at the scene on July 20, 1993, [Doody] and [Feist] did not see anyone in or touching Mr. Foster’s car.” This statement is true only because Mr. Foster’s car was not there. This sentence cleverly made it appear Foster’s car was at the park by saying that no one touched it.
Reed Irvine carefully studied the Report and spoke with Kavanaugh in the spring of 1998.
Irvine: How do you prove that Foster’s car was in the park before his body was, what is your evidence?
Kavanaugh: Well, I’m not going to debate.
Irvine: It is not a debate. It’s a question. Tell me what is the evidence?
Kavanaugh: I’m going to stand by the Report.
Irvine: The Report doesn’t answer that question.
Kavanaugh: The Report does talk about what all the various people in the park saw.
Irvine: Yeah, it said none of those people had anything to do with Foster’s death.
Kavanaugh: It does point out what [Knowlton] saw in the park.
Irvine: But it doesn’t make the point. Intellectual integrity would require an investigator to put down what these people said, what they saw. What is totally ignored is what Doody and Feist said they saw.
Kavanaugh: Well, we put that in.
Irvine: No, it’s not in there. It is not in there. Doody and Feist were absolutely ignored…nothing, nothing, nothing, about the color of the car, the age of the car, none of that is described.
Irvine then quoted from the Report of Kavanaugh’s investigation:
Irvine: “The three cars belonging to Mr. Foster [gray Honda], C4 [Doody’s white Nissan], and C6 [Jean Slade’s blue Mercedes] are the only cars positively identified by law enforcement and the OIC that were in the Fort Marcy parking lot…”
Kavanaugh: Do you disagree with that?
Irvine: Yeah, as a matter of fact the evidence is when the fire engine arrived there was another car there. There was a brown car.
Kavanaugh: Look the Report was trying to be honest about a few things and I thought the Report at least laid it out there.
Irvine: But it doesn’t really. Let’s take page 69, you say three cars belonging to [Doody], [Slade], are the only cars positively identified etcetera, [Knowlton] saw a man in the car next to him. It doesn’t say anything about the color or the age and that [Knowlton] believes strongly that the car he saw was not Mr. Foster’s car. That’s not in here. It’s nowhere in here.
Kavanaugh: It says it’s different color rust brown. That is in a different spot [in the Report].
Irvine: This is what I’d say is intellectually dishonest about the Report. It does not lay out the fact that Doody, Feist, and Knowlton were all describing what would certainly appear to be a different car from Foster’s.
Kavanaugh: It all comes down to that brown car issue right?
Irvine: It’s not just the brownishness, it’s the age…to get the color and the age wrong is a different matter. Plus, the fact that Knowlton has a lot of details in addition to the color and age. For example, [Foster’s] car had decals on it, Vanderbilt and TCU parking stickers and so on, and damage to the right quarter. All things that he insists were not on the car he saw. So what do you think?
Kavanaugh: Well our Report tried to take all that into account…the Report tried to make the most reasonable judgment based on the facts. That’s not to say other people can’t disagree with the inferences. I do think it is important on the color issue, which is different from the age issue, I told you…all the police and medical personnel that were in the park described it as brown.
Irvine: The question that I propose to you is this, what evidence do you have that [Foster’s] car was in the parking lot at 4:30 and at 5:30?
Kavanaugh: Well we know there was a car there.
Irvine: What evidence do you have that it was Foster’s car?
Kavanaugh: Other than no one saw it being moved out and it had Arkansas plates, ah, I guess that is an unanswerable question.
At this point Kavanaugh may have thought he talked too much.
Kavanaugh: You don’t tape these calls do you Reed?
Irvine: Are you kidding? (laughs)
Kavanaugh: Is that a yes or a no?
Irvine: Why of course, I tape virtually all my calls.
Kavanaugh: You tape virtually all your calls.
Irvine: Yes, as Mike Wallace knows.
Irvine studied the official government documents concerning the death of Foster and tried to get journalists and media executives to report the facts. He lent his support to grand jury witness Knowlton, who was a key witness at Fort Marcy Park because did not see Foster’s car.
The U.S. Court of Appeals ordered Starr, over his objection, to include evidence of the cover-up as an appendix in his Report on Foster’s death. The evidence of the cover-up submitted by Knowlton’s attorney John Clarke became the final 20 pages of Starr’s Report. The evidence Irvine told Kavanaugh his investigation ignored was included, and more. The appendix includes copies of 25 federal investigative records proving: Foster’s car was not at the park, there was a bullet hole in Foster’s neck, photos of the neck wound vanished, x-rays of the neck wound vanished, the gun did not belong to Foster, and Knowlton suffered grand jury witness intimidation.
The appendix of the Report is still suppressed by the American press. It also includes evidence of the grand jury witness intimidation and crime scene photos.
After leaving the Independent Counsel’s office Kavanaugh served as White House Senior Associate Counsel, and then as Assistant to the President of the United States and Staff Secretary under George W. Bush. Kavanaugh was later nominated to the D.C. circuit of the U.S, court of appeals by President Bush. Former Deputy Independent Counsel Tuohey supported his confirmation and wrote, “[Brett Kavanaugh] is exceptionally well qualified to serve on one of the nation’s most important appellate courts…”
At his Senate confirmation hearing Senator Orrin Hatch introduced Kavanaugh to the Judiciary Committee with high praise. Describing Kavanaugh’s many accomplishments Hatch said, “Mr. Kavanaugh served in the Office of Independent Counsel under Judge Starr, where he conducted the office’s investigation into the death of former Deputy White House Counsel Vincent W. Foster, Jr. In 1994, Hatch told the Senate Banking Committee, “Accordingly, I want to be clear on one point, there is absolutely no credible evidence to contradict the Fiske Report’s conclusion that Vincent Foster took his own life, and it happened at Fort Marcy Park. There is no credible evidence to the contrary. I suspect conspiracy theorists will always differ with this conclusion.”
Does Kavanaugh have a history of “conservative” rulings?
Yes, he does, but as Victor W. Porlier, a former chief of information-systems development for the US Agency for International Development, pointed out, “he falls into the category of a controlled judge who, like Chief Justice John Roberts, can be allowed to pursue his own conservative legal views until they need him in an “eleventh hour” crucial case to act as a swing vote.”
In fact, Porlier expressed his thoughts on Kavanaugh.
He wrote:
Kavanaugh has an advantage because he has the most consistent conservative judicial track record of the known candidates — one that mirrors Trump’s views on several key issues, including immigration, trade deals, abortion and gun rights, according to two sources familiar with the current White House selection.
For example, Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion in Heller v. District of Columbia, which unapologetically embraced the Second Amendment and argued that judges should not re-interpret the founders’ original intent.
Actually, Heller is not as pro-Second Amendment as you think. Kavanaugh openly allowed that the “right” could be regulated or restriction by state law, and even some federal law, as long as it did not take away the right completely. That is a slippery slope.
His ruling is considered the most pro-Second Amendment opinion of any court of appeals opinion, one that has been cited repeatedly by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
But conservatives who understand government conspiracies are rightly concerned about Kavanaugh’s early association with Special Counsel Ken Starr, a Republican who was called in to cover-up for the Deep State’s murder of Vince Foster, the Clinton’s financial lawyer who knew where all of the Clinton cash was hidden overseas. As the Free Beacon wrote,
Kavanaugh, 53, is a judge on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. He first rose to national attention for his work on the Starr Report, as well as the investigation into the death of former Clinton legal counsel Vince Foster.
The Vince Foster cover-up wasn’t a simple case of an erroneous conclusion based upon weak evidence. This was a full-blown conspiracy to intimidate witnesses that proved the official version was a lie. Such “active measures” cannot be done by honest FBI agents unless they know they are obstructing justice.
Vince Foster’s was killed somewhere in the nation’s Capitol and then later dumped at Fort Marcy park where it was made to look like a suicide scene. Trouble is, he had already bled out elsewhere and the supposed suicide handgun was placed in the wrong hand. Patrick Knowlton was the key witness exposing a major flaw in the official story—the fact that Foster’s car wasn’t in the park parking lot. It was in the government’s harassment of this witness that the major evidence of conspiracy lays.
Knowlton was sitting in a car in the Fort Marcy parking lot at the time the government claimed Foster drove up and went into the park to kill himself. But Knowlton testified the car that was in this spot did not match Foster’s car. Federal agents also in the park tried to intimidate him into leaving, knowing that he was watching their movements.
After Knowlton went to authorities with his suspicions of foul play he began to be subjected to constant harassment by burly men trying to intimidate him on the street and in restaurants. Only when Knowlton went to give testimony at the Starr Commission did he recognized the men as Starr’s FBI agents. They were all sitting up front. As Starr’s deputy, there is no way that Kavanaugh could not have known that there was a cover-up and conspiracy going on with the treatment of Knowlton.
So, despite Kavanaugh’s conservative rulings as a judge, in my opinion, he falls into the category of a controlled judge who, like Chief Justice John Roberts, can be allowed to pursue his own conservative legal views until they need him in an “eleventh hour” crucial case to act as a swing vote. This is what happened to Roberts when he switched sides at the last minute on Obamacare.
Kavanaugh will always be subject to the blackmail of “you knew what Starr did to Knowlton, and you went along with it.” That also implies a more lethal threat of “you know what they did to Vince Foster when he got cold feet about protecting the Clintons.” (emphasis mine).
While time will tell whether or not Kavanaugh is worth his salt, where there are important issues that affected the nation, including the coverup of Vince Foster’s death, he does not appear to be trustworthy to this author. I think Porlier is exactly right on this one.
Criticism of Kavanaugh contraceptive mandate
Conservatives have criticized Judge Kavanaugh for conceding that the government has a “compelling interest” in promoting contraception. Defendants of Judge Kavanaugh has said he was merely following the Supreme Court’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014), as lower courts are bound to do.[19] But Judge Kavanaugh actually went further in the direction of Planned Parenthood than the Supreme Court had.
In his dissent in a related case, Priests for Life v. HHS,[20] Judge Kavanaugh first says[21] that it is necessary to decide whether or not the government has a compelling interest in promoting contraception, because that is a step in applying RFRA to the plaintiff’s claim to be exempt from Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate.
Then Judge Kavanaugh discusses at length[22] the issue of compelling interest. Judge Kavanaugh concedes that the Supreme Court “did not formally hold” that the government has a compelling interest in promoting contraception. He should have stopped there, but he didn’t.
Instead, Judge Kavanaugh took an ambiguous statement from a concurring opinion by his old boss Justice Kennedy, combined it with the opinion of the four dissenting Justices, and concluded that “a majority of the Justices in Hobby Lobby (Justice Kennedy plus the four dissenters) would suggest that the Government has a compelling interest in facilitating women’s access to contraception.”
Judge Kavanaugh then wrote a long paragraph full of Planned Parenthood propaganda, containing many factual assertions about the alleged “numerous benefits” of contraception, benefits which he claimed are “commonly accepted” even though they are all disputed and rebuttable, and not supported by evidence in the record (not that any of the assertions should be subject to judicial fact finding anyway).
In Hobby Lobby the Supreme Court assumed without deciding that contraception is a compelling interest, and Judge Kavanaugh should have done likewise. Instead, he appears to have gone out of his way to hold that the federal government has a legitimate interest, even a compelling interest, to promote contraception or facilitate access to contraception.
In fact, the Supreme Court has never found or held that there is any public purpose or social benefit, let alone a compelling interest, to justify federal legislation promoting contraception. Without such a finding, the entire contraceptive mandate should have been thrown out, not just for religious objectors.
The federal government began funding contraception after the passage of Title X in 1970, but apparently no one has ever challenged the constitutionality of Title X as to whether it served a legitimate public purpose. Contrast that to New Deal passage of Social Security and Unemployment Compensation programs, which were upheld by the Supreme Court in 1938 based on a finding that those programs were justified because they “provide for the … general welfare of the United States” as provided in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
It may be true, as Judge Kavanaugh says, that the alleged “numerous benefits” of contraception are “commonly accepted” as a result of 50 years of Planned Parenthood’s federally funded propaganda, but that does not mean they have been found to be true. A valid public purpose is needed to compel private conduct, and no valid public purpose or social benefit has ever been recognized by the Supreme Court.
On another note, although Kavanaugh’s argumentation was in a dissent that has no legal weight whatsoever, it is still troubling because it was rooted in the idea that assumptions for the sake of scenario creation are identical to arguments intended to have a reasonable person interpret them as being implicit adjudication. This idea has the potential to cause damage on two fronts. First, it paves the way for incorrect interpretations of Hobby Lobby by future lawyers and judges. And second, it opens a pathway to abuse of discretion by future judges due to conflation of terms.
Planned Parenthood
In December 2018, Kavanaugh (along with John Roberts) sided with the liberal wing of the Court, in a 6–3 vote to decline to hear three cases relating to Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood at the state level. Kavanaugh’s decision (and those of the other five justices in the majority) were implicitly criticized in a dissent written by Clarence Thomas, which stated that “the Court’s refusal to do its job” may have had “something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named ‘Planned Parenthood.'”[23][24][25]
Sources:
