Scott Shelton
Staff Writer
It seems President Donald Trump has appointed Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court to further his interests.
Putting everything else aside, views on the powers of the American presidency alone should disqualify him from being on the bench.
In a 2009 article for the Minnesota Law Review, Kavanaugh wrote that Congress should consider creating a law that protects a sitting president from criminal prosecution and investigation.
In 1999, Kavanaugh said in an interview with Washington Lawyer Magazine that the Supreme Court might have been wrong when it decided that President Richard Nixon had to turn over White House recordings.
Trump is currently under fire on two main fronts: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and the Stormy Daniels scandal.
There is a strong possibility that if Trump is indicted for crimes, the Supreme Court will have an influential role in determining the outcome.
If confirmed, Kavanaugh could help set a precedent in court whether a president can be charged and convicted of a crime.
There is a real possibility that Kavanaugh was nominated to be the deciding vote to ensure that Trump won’t be convicted of a crime and that the president of the United States is indeed above the law.
Senate Republicans and the White House know this, and they’re pushing to confirm Kavanaugh as quickly as possible.
It would be hypocritical for Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans to allow him to have a fair nomination process since they did not give the same opportunity to Merrick Garland two years ago.
By fast-tracking Kavanaugh, they are preventing the American people from having a transparent nominee and a comprehensive nomination process.
The White House, citing executive privilege, is holding back over 100,000 pages of records from Kavanaugh’s time as a lawyer in the Bush administration, according to the Washington Post.
This makes people like me wonder what they are hiding. Why are there so many documents being hidden?
The White House and Senate Republicans are claiming those pages are irrelevant. Even if they are irrelevant, I think the American people deserve to have all documents made public.
The American people deserve to have complete transparency with our nominee so we can decide if he supports the fundamentals of American democracy as we know it.
Partisanship is off the rails in Washington, D.C., these days, and it’s no surprise that Democrats want to stymie the nomination process for as long as possible.
Since Republicans need only a simple majority to confirm Kavanaugh, the margin of error for the GOP is razor-thin.
Republicans have a one-seat advantage, so Democrats only need one to stand with them and say that this nominee’s views on the American presidency’s powers are too extreme.
It has become apparent that Trump is trying to put someone on the Supreme Court who will protect him from potentially being convicted of crimes.
At a time when democracy is hanging in the balance, Brett Kavanaugh is unfit to be on the Supreme Court of the United States.
