It’s common for newsrooms to dig extra deep to divine the legal and personal thinking of Supreme Court nominees, but the New York Times is going above and beyond in its pursuit of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
A Times reporter filed a request last month under the Maryland Public Information Act seeking all policing records pertaining to the judge and his wife, Ashley, at their home address in Chevy Chase, Md., according to the Republican-linked group NTK Network.
The request, which was discovered by NTK, reads, “The New York Times requests digital copies of all policing pertaining to Brett Kavanaugh, a resident of Chevy Chase Section 5. Specifically, we request all policing records, including police reports or calls of service (911 calls or otherwise), pertaining to Brett Kavanaugh, his wife, and their home address.”
The note specified that the records cover 2006 to present day.
The policing records request was submitted on July 19. Its author explained that such records are of “public interest” because Kavanaugh is a nominee to the Supreme Court.
“The request is time sensitive and in the public interest, as it relates to reporting on Brett Kavanaugh’s recent and pending nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court,” the reporter wrote.
I’m not entirely sure what the Kavanaughs’ 911 calls have to do with understanding the judge’s jurisprudential opinions, or how that information would be of “public interest” regarding his nomination to the Supreme Court, but okay. Probably they were hoping to find something particularly ugly, like maybe a domestic altercation. As of this writing, it appears the only policing record from the Kavanaughs’ Chevy Chase address is a 2015 call to report the family car stolen.
The 911 request comes after the same reporter filed a separate application this year asking that the Village of Chevy Chase Section 5 provide him with any email that Ashley Kavanaugh sent in her capacity as town manager. The reporter specified he was looking for emails containing certain keywords and terms, including “liberal,” “abortion,” “gay,” and “federalist.” That search came up with nothing interesting.
The Times going after Kavanaugh’s policing records is giving me flashbacks to 2005, when news media tried to get a read on then-Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito Jr. Back then, reporters swarmed the home of Alito’s 90-year-old mother, Rose, peppering her with questions about her son’s position on matters including abortion.
This Associated Press report from Nov. 1, 2005, documents the attention the judge’s nonagenarian mother faced from media, when it reads, “Alito, a Catholic, is opposed to abortion, his 90-year-old mother forthrightly told reporters in New Jersey.” This continued on through the month.
A separate AP article reported on Nov. 31, 2005:
More blunt than her son might wish, she said, “I think he was upset that he didn’t get there in the first shot, that Miers got it.” That was a reference to Bush’s choice of Harriet Miers, since withdrawn.
If confirmed, Alito would be the fifth Catholic on the Supreme Court. “Of course he’s against abortion,” his mother said, another comment supporters in Washington might wish she’d held back.
Naturally, Alito’s critics highlighted these and similar remarks in an effort to tank his confirmation. They failed, obviously, but not before they and their allies in the press were able to exploit a 90-year-old mother.
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This article and its headline have been updated.
