Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh argued that a sitting President can be impeached for lying.
The young attorney decided the president deserved to be forced from office for “his pattern of revolting behavior†and the “sheer number of his wrongful acts.â€
“The president has disgraced his office.… He has lied to his aides. He has lied to the American people,†Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a 1998 memo to his colleagues. “I’m strongly opposed to giving [him] any ‘break’ … unless he either resigns or … issues a public apology.â€
Kavanaugh, a fast-rising Republican legal star, then 33, went back to work on a 132-page memo to his boss, independent counsel Kenneth Starr, that outlined the grounds for impeaching President Clinton.
It was 20 years ago this month that Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, set out his broad view of obstruction of justice and of what constitutes an impeachable offense, arguing the president could be removed from office even for a rarely charged crime — in this case, lying under oath in a civil deposition, to deny a sexual affair with a 22-year-old White House intern. By repeating false stories for months, lying to the public and his aides, trying to cover up the affair with Monica Lewinsky and helping her find a job in New York, the president, Kavanaugh argued, engaged in “a conspiracy to obstruct justice.â€
This debunks the myth perpetrated by the left that Trump’s putting Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court as some way to protect him from impeachment.
