Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy requested President Trump add his former clerk Brett Kavanaugh to the president’s list of potential justice picks.
Kennedy, 83, asked Trump to have a secret meeting, according to the new book Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover by Ruth Marcus, who is the deputy editorial page editor for the Washington Post.
The meeting came in 2017 after Kennedy presided over the swearing-in of Justice Neil Gorsuch, who had also been one of his clerks. Marcus wrote about the meeting, “The justice’s message to the president was as consequential as it was straightforward, and it was a remarkable insertion by a sitting justice into the distinctly presidential act of judge picking.”
Trump met with Kennedy again in June 2018 when the justice told him he planned to retire. Marcus said Kennedy again told Trump that Kavanaugh should get his Supreme Court seat. The author noted that some have also reported that Kennedy recommended Judge Raymond Kethledge.
The book recounts how Kavanaugh was not a shoe-in for the nominations after conservative advocates said they wanted someone who was more conservative. Michael Davis, the chief counsel for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, called Kavanaugh “too Bushie, too swampy.”
Trump reportedly became fed up with some of the criticism by conservatives, saying, “Everybody should just keep quiet. I make the decisions here.”
