Setting aside the hypocrisy given his personal role as coauthor of the Starr report, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s argument in his 2009 law review article that the indictment and trial of a sitting president “would cripple the federal government, rendering it unable to function with credibility in either the international or domestic arenas” is laughable as applied to Donald Trump, who has repeatedly shown what he is really spending his time on: Roseanne Barr, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s NBC ratings, a morning TV show host’s supposed plastic surgery, Meryl Streep, and on and on.
Kavanaugh’s previous analysis was clearly based on an assumption that the individual embodying the executive branch was someone who actually took the job seriously, and it withers under scrutiny as a general proposition. As a result, Kavanaugh should make clear that he would employ this reasoning only if it squared with the actual facts on the ground; otherwise, regardless of his qualifications (or any other potential issues), he can and should be rejected by the Senate for this reason alone, since that would show that he is predisposed—and biased in the sitting president’s favor—on an issue likely to come before him on the bench.
Raymond P. Ausrotas
Belmont
