Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh played coy when Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked him about presidential pardon power and whether it extends to a president being able to pardon himself.
“The question of self-pardons is something I’ve never analyzed. It is a question that I’ve not written about,” Kavanaugh said. “It is a question therefore that is a hypothetical question that I can’t begin to answer in this context as a sitting judge and as a nominee to the Supreme Court.”
Leahy followed up with a question whether a president can pardon someone in exchange for a promise they won’t testify against him.
“Senator, I’m not going to answer hypothetical questions of that sort,” Kavanaugh said.
Kavanaugh calls "the question on self-pardons" hypothetical. pic.twitter.com/4uYFlePe2r
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 5, 2018
Kavanaugh Kabuki.
The prospective SCOTUS stooge believes he is auditioning for a banana republic…
That’s charitable.
Senator Leahy gutted Kavanaugh. He basically accused Kavanaugh, with evidence, of lying to Congress in his 2006 testimony regarding his participation in the Bush WH reviews of the legality of torture, and also knowingly using stolen Democratic emails (from Leahy and Senate Dem staff) to prepare potential Bush nominees for confirmation hearings. The person who stole those emails was a Kavanaugh colleague at the office of WH Counsel and emailed the stolen info to Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh had no response except to say that, ‘911 made me do it’.
“Hypotheticals”: when you don’t want to show your partisan hand to the opposition