President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court on Wednesday received the backing of Bob Bennett, a lawyer who represented President Clinton in the 1990s.
Bennett sent a letter Tuesday to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and ranking member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., praising Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s qualifications and fairness as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
“As a Washington attorney, I can attest to the high esteem in which the bar holds Brett. Lawyers love arguing before him because they know he will approach every case with an open mind. To him, it doesn’t matter whether you are bringing a ‘conservative’ case or a ‘liberal’ case; what matters is whether you can support your case with solid arguments grounded in the law,” Bennett wrote.
“That leads him to be an unusually balanced questioner, one who will rigorously test the case brought by each side rather than concentrating his fire on only one advocate. On the bench, Brett is not trying to score points so much as tally them,” he wrote.
Bennett and Kavanaugh first met in the mid-1990s, when Bennett represented Clinton in the Paula Jones case and Kavanaugh worked in the Office of Independent Counsel for Ken Starr, who was investigating Clinton.
“That hardly seems like the winning recipe for a close friendship. Much like politics, litigation often brings out people’s worst tribal instincts, and the temptation to view your opponent as a villain can be especially overwhelming when the stakes are high,” Bennett wrote. “Despite being on opposite sides of the Starr investigation, however, Brett and I managed to avoid falling prey to that trap. Credit goes in large part to Brett, who, as far back as I can remember, has had an innate sense of fairness and civility that has governed his relationships with allies and adversaries equally.”
Describing Kavanaugh as a “judge’s judge,” Bennett offered plaudits for Kavanaugh’s integrity.
“Brett is the most qualified person any Republican president could possibly have nominated,” he wrote to the Judiciary Committee leaders. “Were the Senate to fail to confirm Brett, it would not only mean passing up the opportunity to confirm a great jurist, but it would also undermine civility in politics twice over: first in playing politics with such an obviously qualified nominee, and then again in losing the opportunity to put such a strong advocate for decency and civility on our nation’s highest court.”
Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in July after Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement.
His nomination kicked off a fierce confirmation battle, and Senate Democrats sparred with Republicans over the release of documents from Kavanaugh’s three years as staff secretary for President George W. Bush.
Kavanaugh will appear before the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday for the first day of his confirmation hearing, which is expected to last up to four days.
He will be introduced by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Lisa Blatt, a self-described liberal Supreme Court litigator.
