Among the absurd attacks the Left will hurl at Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh in the coming weeks is the claim that, as one CNN talking head put it, Kavanaugh supposedly was independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s partisan “attack dog” against the Clintons.
I can personally attest that this smear is garbage.
As a former Capitol Hill staffer and then-Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial writer who had done copious research into the vast realm of Clinton scandals, I was commissioned by the Wall Street Journal editorial page in November 1997 to review a book on those scandals — a book with some good new reporting, but sometimes extravagant conclusions. Double-checking a number of the book’s assertions, apparently I asked enough of the right questions to enough of the right people. Kavanaugh, then a top deputy to Starr, agreed (upon the recommendation of his superiors) to help me separate wheat from chaff.
He wasn’t “leaking” privileged information, but rather helping me cross-reference and access already-public, but not widely noticed, accurate information — particularly about the sad suicide of Clinton insider Vince Foster. Far from being a partisan attack dog, Kavanaugh helped walk me through material that tended more to absolve the Clintons (on the specific issues at hand) than condemn them. He wasn’t pro-Clinton or anti-Clinton, but assertively pro-fact and pro-fairness.
People now may forget how widespread were the fevered suspicions that Foster had been murdered and his body moved, perhaps even from the White House itself. In several extensive phone conversations with me, Kavanaugh put those suspicions decisively to rest.
Of course, it is widely known that Kavanaugh was directly in charge of the separate report into Foster’s death that definitively established it was a suicide, in Fort Marcy Park, with Foster’s own revolver. My own conversations with Kavanaugh impressed me with his thoughtfulness and even-handedness and his particular concern that innocent minor players in the Clinton drama not be subjected to untoward rumors.
Two years later, famed Watergate scoopmeister Bob Woodward provided the definitive account of the Starr investigation. It confirmed, repeatedly, that Kavanaugh, far from being a braying attack dog, instead was the no-nonsense voice of wise restraint. And, despite what has been repeated numerous times in the first 16 hours since Trump announced Kavanaugh as his nominee, Kavanaugh was positively not the lead author of the overall (non-Foster suicide) Starr report.
“The main author of the report, Stephen Bates, disagreed” with Kavanaugh about the latter’s argument that Starr should exclude much of the salacious material about President Bill Clinton’s sexcapades from the main body of the report — or that, at least, they should warn Congress not to immediately release it to the public until considering how to handle the explicit material.
Woodward reported that long before that disagreement, Kavanaugh had unsuccessfully argued with Starr that the counsel’s office should avoid urging Clinton’s removal from office, instead letting the House draw its own conclusions. As Woodward reported it, Kavanaugh said:
“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.”
Kavanaugh was not exonerating Clinton, but only saying it was not the job of the counsel’s office to make a determination. Significantly, unlike FBI Director James Comey 19 years later, Kavanaugh rightly insisted that investigators not try to tell prosecutors (or House impeachment panelists) what their job was.
“Kavanaugh was concerned,” reported Woodward, “that Starr thought it was the catalogue of Clinton’s sexual behavior that provided a basis for recommending that Clinton should be bounced out of office, rather than the alleged crimes. The narrative was going to give ammunition to Starr’s critics that he was a sex-crazed prosecutor.”
Also, echoing Kavanaugh’s concern with me that bit players (nannies, low-level staffers, etc.) be spared an unfair spotlight, Woodward also reported:
“Starr’s report was completed, but his investigation was not over. Months later, after the House impeached President Clinton and the Senate began a full-scale trial, Starr was planning to indict Julie Hiatt Steele, a woman whose testimony contradicted former White House volunteer Kathleen Willey’s allegation that the president had groped her. Kavanaugh was appalled. Steele was so tangential — she had nothing to do with Clinton or [Monica] Lewinsky. An indictment of Steele, Kavanaugh wrote in a memo to Starr, would win the ‘trifecta’ for abuse of the independent counsel law. It would be too hard on a bit player, too late in the investigation, and not weighty enough, he argued.”
Even as a young lawyer, Kavanaugh had a judicious outlook and temperament. His 12 years on the federal bench confirmed those traits. He will make a fine Supreme Court justice.
Quin Hillyer (@QuinHillyer) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a former associate editorial page editor for the Washington Examiner, and is the author of The Accidental Prophet trilogy of recently published satirical, literary novels.
