How a private meeting with Kennedy helped Trump get to 'yes' on Kavanaugh

[Snellius]

While he was eager to keep the suspense alive, the president was always leaning toward Kennedy’s former clerk.

Source: Politico

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/09/brett-kavanaugh-trump-private-meeting-706137

After Justice Anthony Kennedy told President Donald Trump he would relinquish his seat on the Supreme Court, the president emerged from his private meeting with the retiring jurist focused on one candidate to name as his successor: Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Kennedy’s former law clerk.

Trump, according to confidants and aides close to the White House, has become increasingly convinced that “the judges,” as he puts it, or his administration’s remaking of the federal judiciary in its conservative image, is central to his legacy as president. And he credits Kennedy, who spent more than a decade at the center of power on the court, for helping give him the opportunity.

So even as Trump dispatched his top lawyers to comb though Kavanaugh’s rulings and quizzed allies about whether he was too close to the Bush family, potentially a fatal flaw, the president was always leaning toward accepting Kennedy’s partiality for Kavanaugh while preserving the secret until his formal announcement, sources with knowledge of his thinking told POLITICO.

Trump, who spent more time with Kavanaugh than the other finalists, was impressed with the judge’s credentials, long judicial record and fidelity to the Constitution, according to administration officials. What was listed as a deal-breaker to some on the right — his long paper trail — was actually the thing that drew Trump to Kavanaugh.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/09/brett-kavanaugh-trump-private-meeting-706137

[dalton99a]

1. They "forgot" to mention Deutsche Bank

Kennedy’s seat, meantime, seemed destined to go to Kavanaugh, thanks in part to the glowing review of Kennedy, whose son, Justin, knows Donald Trump Jr. through New York real estate circles, and whose other adult child has connections to Trump World via the president’s 2016 Silicon Valley adviser Peter Thiel, most recently when the Kennedy firm Disruptive Technology Advisers worked with Thiel’s Palantir Technologies. Both Kennedy sons have been guests at the White House, and Trump had nice things to say about Justin in comments to Kennedy caught on a hot mic last year.

For a White House that had been taking the pulse of the court through the deep network of Kennedy law clerks, his retirement had long been on their wish list. And a year after Trump chose Gorsuch to serve with his mentor, he picked another ex-Kennedy aide to join him on the high court, a move that will shape how the president and the retired justice are remembered.

[appalachiablue]

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[appalachiablue]

3. CNN Video: WH Rep. Squirms At Question Re Trump-Kennedy Deal for Kavanaugh

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017500431