President Donald Trump brushed aside concerns about Brett Kavanaugh’s ability to be objective in the wake of his political allegations to senators, saying his Supreme Court nominee will be ‘totally impartial.’
‘I think he’ll be totally impartial,’ the president said Tuesday before he left the White House for a campaign event in Philadelphia.
Kavanaugh’s ability to serve as a neutral judge came under question after his partisan rhetoric during his at times angry, at times tearful Senate testimony in which he blamed his work on Bill Clinton’s impeachment for the Democrats’ treatment of him.
President Trump said Brett Kavanaugh would be an impartial Supreme Court judge
Democrats questioned Kavanaugh’s treatment after his fiery testimony on Thursday
He also got into arguments with Democratic senators during his time before the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday, claiming he was a victim of partisan politics.
‘This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election,’ Kavanaugh claimed.
‘Fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons, and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups,’ he said.
But Trump brushed aside concerns about how his nominee is doing in the confirmation process.
‘Judge Kavanaugh’s doing pretty well, it seems to me, over the past 24 hours. A lot is going to depend on what comes back from the FBI,’ the president said.
Senators, on Friday, delayed a vote on Kavanaugh in order to give the FBI time to investigate sexual allegations against him.
‘I think he was fighting people that were making very tough charges against him and I thought he did very well. I really did. I thought he did very well,’ Trump said of Kavanaugh’s testimony. ‘He’s fighting very hard for his reputation, for his family. I thought what happened was really tough, tough stuff. I’ve been watching this stuff for a long time. I’ve never seen anything like going on with respect to Judge Kavanaugh. He’s a high quality person. This is a number one student, a top intellect. He’s never gone through anything like this. I think he did very well.’
But the president did say lying to Congress is unacceptable. Democrats have expressed concern Kavanaugh was not truthful about his drinking habits.
‘I don’t think you can lie to Congress. There have been a lot of people over the last year that have lied to Congress and, to me, that would not be acceptable,’ Trump said.
Some Democrats have expressed concern the FBI – in their investigation into sexual allegations against Kavanaugh – are reportedly not talking to high school and college classmates, some of whom have said Kavanaugh drank to excess.
In his committee testimony, Kavanaugh said ‘I like beer’ but said he never drank to the point of blacking out.
‘Sometimes I had too many beers. I liked beer. I still like beer. But I never drank beer to the point of blacking out, and I never sexually assaulted anyone,’ Kavanaugh said on Thursday.
Additionally, a former Yale University classmate of Kavanaugh’s described him as ‘a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker’ at college.
Charles ‘Chad’ Ludington, who now teaches at North Carolina State University, said on Sunday that he is ‘deeply troubled’ by what he claims is a blatant mischaracterization by Kavanaugh of his drinking.
Ludington, who said in a statement that he was Kavanaugh’s friend at Yale and used to drink with him, accused the Supreme Court nominee of being untruthful in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the extent of his drinking in college.
In addition to being a ‘frequent’ and ‘heavy drinker’, Ludington said Kavanaugh was often ‘belligerent and aggressive’ when drunk.
‘On many occasions I heard Brett slur his words and saw him staggering from alcohol consumption, not all of which was beer,’ he said.
During the hearing on Thursday, Kavanaugh insisted that he had never blacked out from drinking alcohol. He is pictured on left at his Yale graduation
Charles ‘Chad’ Ludington, who said he was Brett Kavanaugh’s friend at Yale and sometimes drank with him, has described him as ‘a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker’
Sen. Dianne Feinstein questioned Kavanaugh’s temper during his hearing
Democrats also raised questions if Kavanaugh’s temperament made him an appropriate nominee for the Supreme Court.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Friday she was stunned that Kavanaugh had joined in the Republicans’ political attack.
‘Candidly, in my 25 years on this committee, I have never seen a nominee for any position behave in that manner,’ she told the Los Angeles Times.
He ‘yelled at Democrats,’ she said, and his suggestion that Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation had something to do with Democrats avenging the Clintons was ‘unbelievable.’
‘This was not someone who reflected an impartial temperament or the fairness and evenhandedness one would see in a judge. This was someone who was angry and belligerent,’ Feinstein said.