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Brett Kavanaugh is Trump's Supreme Court nominee

Trump makes Supreme Court pick

President Trump announced Monday evening that he is nominating Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court seat being vacated by retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. He said of Kavanaugh that he has "impeccable credentials and unsurpassed qualifications, and a proven commitment to equal justice under the law" and referred to him as a "judge's judge."

Kavanaugh, in accepting the nomination, talked briefly about the role of judges. "My judicial philosophy is straightforward," he said. "A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law. A judge must interpret statutes as written. And a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent."

Kavanaugh, who clerked for Kennedy, is a well-known conservative jurist who has served on the D.C. Appeals Court since 2006. A graduate of Yale and then Yale Law, Kavanaugh went to work for independent counsel Ken Starr after his time with Kennedy, and assisted with Starr's investigations into President Bill Clinton. He was also the lead author of the Starr Report, which famously recounted Clinton's extramarital affairs in sometimes lurid detail.



After several years in the Bush White House, which included a time as White House staff secretary, Kavanaugh was nominated for the D.C. Appeals Court. The fight over his confirmation was contentious, with Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin at one point calling him the "Zelig or Forrest Gump of Republican politics…whether it's Elian Gonzalez or the Starr Report, you are there."


Kavanaugh's nomination now heads to the U.S. Senate, which is controlled by a narrow, 51-to-49 seat GOP majority. Democrats are likely to take issue with a number of Kavanaugh's decisions, including ones pushing back on the government's ability to regulate commerce. They are also likely to spend time examining his views on abortion, an issue now- Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer questioned him about during his 2006 confirmation hearings.


Despite his involvement in the Starr investigation, Kavanaugh has written that Congress should pass a law protecting a sitting president from being subjected to civil suit. In that same paper, Kavanaugh argued 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 arena" and that "even the lesser burdens of a criminal investigation…are time consuming and distracting." 

Given Mr. Trump's current legal challenges, Kavanaugh's opinions on these issues are sure to be intensely scrutinized during his upcoming confirmation hearings.

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