The mind boggles once again at the self-centered, mendacious irresponsibility of former President Bill Clinton.
Clinton said Sunday that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh deserved to get raked over the coals with unsubstantiated allegations of sexual assault because of Kavanaugh’s role in investigating the suicide of longtime Clinton friend Vince Foster in 1993.
This is spectacularly wrongheaded on three levels.
First, it suggests that a Supreme Court nominee should be blocked as part of political payback, regardless of whether the last-minute allegations against him are true.
Second, it suggests that a duly conducted investigation into Foster’s death, one specifically included in the independent counsel’s purview by direction of then-Attorney General Janet Reno, should not have exhaustively analyzed all the evidence if such examination was distressing to the president and first lady.
Third, Clinton is wrongly blaming the one man who, more than any other, definitively concluded that Foster’s death was indeed a suicide rather than a Clinton-inspired hit job. Clinton should have spent 20 years thanking Kavanaugh, not seeking revenge against him.
Here’s why.
When independent counsel Kenneth Starr re-opened the investigation into Foster’s death and assigned Kavanaugh to lead it, the death was subject to numerous theories that had not adequately been addressed by previous reports. Some of the conspiracy theories were crackpot agitation, but the fact remained that the earlier reports had not fully explored a series of anomalies. Those unexplored anomalies gave rise both to legitimate questions and to the crackpottery. The best way to defuse both was to investigate again, this time without leaving loose ends.
Under Starr’s direction, that is exactly what Kavanaugh did. Kavanaugh was not some out of control cowboy out to nail a hide. Instead, as Starr himself explained, it was Starr who ordered the younger lawyer to “leave no stone unturned.”
That’s what Kavanaugh did — to the benefit of the Clintons. His eventual report, a model of fairness and thoroughness, shot down all legitimate doubts and even quieted some of the crackpots.
Under instructions from Starr and others outranking him, Kavanaugh also privately walked several journalists through the public evidence as his report was being released. (I was one of them.) In doing so, he was particularly likely to emphasize little-noticed information that further exonerated, or cast an innocence on, the Clintons and their close associates.
Later, when the subject turned to the perjury and obstruction investigation related to the president’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, it was Kavanaugh who urged restraint rather than hyperaggressiveness. Acting as a voice of wisdom, Kavanaugh reportedly told Starr that “the narrative shows how pathetic Clinton is, that he needs therapy, not removal. It’s a sad story. Our job is not to get Clinton out. It is just to give information.”
In fact, so considerate was Kavanaugh of the Clintons that even as he was nominated to the Supreme Court, some on the political Right threw barbs at Kavanaugh. For example, the very morning after Trump nominated Kavanaugh, Judge Andrew Napolitano suggested on Fox News, quite outrageously, that Kavanaugh helped cover up for “thugs” who supposedly moved Foster’s body from the White House to the spot where it was found in Fort Marcy Park.
Yet, now Bill Clinton says it was okay to bedevil Kavanaugh as payback for Clinton’s own anguish in the 1990s. In doing so, Clinton is blaming the wrong man, for the wrong reasons, using unjust principles. It is Clinton, not Kavanaugh, who appears the lesser man.
