Brett Kavanaugh and the Bush Torture Program

[Solly Mack]

https://www.afj.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/AFJ-Katsas-Report.pdf

White House Staff Secretary] Brett Kavanaugh’s
nomination to the D.C. Circuit. Former
Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman
Arlen Specter asked him about his role in
specific White House policies, and Kavanaugh
answered.

- Chairman Specter: Did you have anything
to do with the issues of interrogation
of prisoners relating to the allegations
of torture in the so-called Bybee
memorandum?

- Mr. Kavanaugh: No, Mr. Chairman.

- Chairman Specter: Did you have anything
to do with the questions of rendition?

- Mr. Kavanaugh: No, Mr. Chairman.

- Chairman Specter: Did you have anything
to do with the questions relating to
detention of inmates at Guantanamo?

- Mr. Kavanaugh: No, Mr. Chairman.

- Chairman Specter: Did you have anything
to do with Mr. Abramoff and the many
visits which he apparently made to the
White House?

- Mr. Kavanaugh: No, Mr. Chairman.

- One period of focus will be in 2001-2003, when he served in the high positions of Senior Associate Counsel and Associate Counsel to the President, and then Assistant to the President and White House Staff Secretary. All of President George W. Bush’s paper crossed his desk. Questioned about this in 2003-2006, he ducked, stating he was uninvolved in formulating the Bush administration’s detention and interrogation policies (in a word, policies authorizing torture) in the aftermath of 9/11. His ducking was so unpersuasive that Senators Patrick Leahy and Dick Durbin, in 2007, accused him of “misleading” the Committee. Durbin said “it appears you misled me, the Senate Judiciary Committee and the nation.” -

But the following year, The Washington Post and NPR reported that Kavanaugh and other top White House lawyers met in 2002 and debated whether the Supreme Court would uphold the administration’s decision to deny lawyers to Americans designated as enemy combatants. Kavanaugh predicted that Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote at the time, would reject the policy. (Kavanaugh had clerked for Kennedy in the early 1990s.)

After the media revelations, Durbin wrote Kavanaugh a letter accusing him of misleading lawmakers. The senator requested an explanation and asked Kavanaugh to disqualify himself from cases involving detainees and enemy combatants.

Kavanaugh obviously did not heed Durbin’s request to step down from detainee cases. On Tuesday, Durbin tweeted that he is still waiting for a response from the judge.

More - Federal Judge Downplayed Role in Detainee Cases

"What was your role in the original Haynes nomination and decision to renominate him?" Durbin asked. "And at the time of the nomination, what did you know about Mr. Haynes's role in crafting the administration's detention and interrogation policies?"

Kavanaugh replied, "Senator, I was not involved and am not involved in the questions about the rules governing detention of combatants, and so I do not have any involvement with that."

In fact, in 2002, Kavanaugh and a group of top White House lawyers discussed whether the Supreme Court would uphold the Bush administration's decision to deny lawyers to American enemy combatants. Kavanaugh advised the group that the Supreme Court's swing voter, Justice Anthony Kennedy, would probably reject the president's assertion that the men were not entitled to counsel. Kavanaugh had worked as a clerk for Kennedy. That meeting was first reported in The Washington Post. NPR independently confirmed the details with multiple sources.

Kavanaugh denies knowing of wiretap, torture policies



In his work for President Bush, Kavanaugh has also sought vigorously to expand presidential secrecy and promote what critics have called an “imperial presidency.” This has included efforts to keep secret the records of Vice President Cheney’s energy task force meetings and to eviscerate the Presidential Records Act concerning the records of former presidents.

Kavanaugh and GTMO

In theory, Guantanamo detainees can challenge the legality of their detention in federal court. But in practice, those courts have provided limited relief to enemy combatants. Civil liberties groups and detainee defense lawyers argue that the D.C. Circuit, where Kavanaugh has sat since 2006, is significantly to blame.

“The circuit court has blatantly disregarded a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the right to habeas corpus rights for Guantanamo Bay detainees and ignored the requirement that the circuit conduct a robust review of prisoners’ detainment,” the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, wrote in 2013.

When the D.C. Circuit sided with the government on enemy combatant cases, Kavanaugh often went beyond the rest of the panel in defending the government’s detention authority. And he repeatedly referred to detainee claims that relied on international law as an attempt to “smuggle” international norms into U.S. law.

[T]he federal courts are not empowered to smuggle international law into the U.S. Constitution and then wield it as a club against Congress and the President in wartime.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh

In other words, international law doesn’t matter, unless America says it does.

[bettyellen]

1. He lied to get his last judgeship. He lied immediately after being nominated...

(Reading the Trump script about no president looking longer and harder for SC judges) and he has been inconsistent his entire career. He is a lying partisan hack.

[Solly Mack]

2. Yep

[bettyellen]

3. Fix the Court is filing an FOIA for Karanaugh's emails!

Since he’s a proven liar the senate committee must insist on the emails.

[Solly Mack]

4. That's great! I believe they will insist.

[magicarpet]

5. For these Fascists, outright lying is just a parlor game.

[Solly Mack]

6. A way of life.