These three threads from @DavidLat are very strong and worth your time. I would like to add a couple of points that apply to all three lines of questioning: Do you really think Brett Kavanaugh is so dumb—so mind-numbingly, idiotically stupid—as to lie under oath in this setting?
Even if you hate the guy, take a deep breath and consider: Kavanaugh is a very good lawyer. Very good. He was being asked about matters he knew were going to come up. He was being asked about prior testimony that took place more than a decade ago. He had time to prepare.
Any statute of limitations for that prior testimony is long passed. In other words, he could face no possible exposure for his prior statements—except if he doubled down on them in new testimony.
There was nothing to prevent him from saying something like, “Senator, I appear to have misspoke in my prior appearance on this point. With the benefit of these documents it looks like I played a more substantial role in the Pickering nomination than I remembered back then.”
What could possibly possess a good lawyer to double down on prior lies (if lies they were) and reiterate them now, when the entire world is watching on national television? Do you really think he would do that?
With the entire Justice Department?
Really?
Really?
There’s a far simpler explanation for Kavanaugh’s behavior: He believed his testimony in 2004 and 2006 to be truthful, and he told the truth as he understood it this time too—and that any errors are minor and inadvertent and not the result of trying to cover something up.
I have known Kavanaugh for a very long time, since the mid/late-1990s. We interacted over a bunch of the issues at issue in these lines of questioning. I wrote a book about Starr, for example, and I covered both post-9/11 antiterrorism issues and judicial confirmations while...
...he was working those issues in the White House. As reporters keep pointing out to me, some of the emails among those released by the committee are to and from me (none very interesting, by the way).
There are a lot of good reasons for liberals to oppose Kavanaugh. He’s a genuine conservative who will do a lot of the things liberals are afraid of. One of the reasons to oppose him is not that he’s some kind of terrible person. He’s a thoroughly decent and honorable person.
Another good reason to oppose him is not that he’s a liar. He’s not. Full stop. There’s no need to demonize one’s opponents. And there’s no need to gin up a “perjury” issue here.
I know this isn’t going to make me popular, but WTF, I don’t care. It’s the truth as *I* see it.
That’s all I got.
(I meant with the entire Justice Department watching)
