A Silver Lining?

One of the reasons progressives have been lining up against Donald Trump's latest Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is the belief that the latter would favor limiting investigation and prosecution of a sitting President, based on a quick reading of some of his scholarly writings. But according to Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare, this interpretation is all wrong (details here).

"If Kavanaugh’s writings on special counsel investigations really influenced Trump’s decision to nominate him, then Trump is a bigger fool than I have imagined," Wittes writes. "Kavanaugh’s writings on the subject don’t clarify all of his views on the subject of the Mueller investigation. But they clarify certain big things, and those things are really not good for Donald Trump."

Wittes then carefully setps through why he has reached this conclusion. This may all seem like "inside baseball" for lawyers, but the conclusion is important: Kavanaugh may turn out to be Trump's biggest enemy on the Supreme Court should any presidential appeal reach that body for review.

History tells us that many Supreme Court justices have become stubbornly independent once they are seated on the high court and don't always or even often vote the way their nominator would hope. So while Kavanaugh may be reliably conservative in many of his decisions, he may choose to be contrarian if any appeal affecting Trump's criminality comes before the high court, in order to demonstrate his independence and loyalty to the constitution.