Brett Kavanaugh

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Biography

Brett Michael Kavanaugh was born February 12, 1965, in Washington, D.C., and raised in Bethesda, Maryland. He attended Georgetown Preparatory School, an elite all-boys Jesuit prep school (class of 1983), then graduated cum laude from Yale University in 1987 with a degree in history and from Yale Law School in 1990. After a 1993 clerkship for Justice Anthony Kennedy, he joined the Republican legal establishment that would carry him to the Supreme Court. He has been a member of the Federalist Society since 1988.

Kavanaugh’s career was built inside Republican legal operations. From 1994 to 1998 he served as an Associate Independent Counsel in Kenneth Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton and was a principal author of the Starr Report recommending Clinton’s impeachment. He then served President George W. Bush as Associate Counsel (2001–2003), working on judicial nominations alongside Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society, and as White House Staff Secretary (2003–2006) during the Iraq War, the torture-memo period, and warrantless surveillance. During his 2006 D.C. Circuit confirmation he testified that he was “not involved” in detainee-policy questions, but later-released documents showed he had received emails on rendition, interrogation, and the torture memos — a discrepancy critics flagged as a possible misleading of Congress. Bush nominated him to the D.C. Circuit in 2006, where he served twelve years and spoke at more than 50 Federalist Society events; Senator Sheldon Whitehouse remarked that Kavanaugh appeared to “set the record for auditioning at Federalist Society events.”

Trump nominated Kavanaugh to replace the retiring Justice Kennedy on July 9, 2018. Leonard Leo personally lobbied for the nomination and helped raise upward of $15 million to support the confirmation. The hearings became a national event after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified on September 27, 2018, that a drunken 17-year-old Kavanaugh had pinned her to a bed and covered her mouth at a high-school party; Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez separately alleged he exposed himself to her at a dormitory party. Kavanaugh categorically denied both allegations (“I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone. Not in high school, not in college, not ever”) and delivered an angry, partisan response, calling the proceedings “a calculated and orchestrated political hit” driven by “revenge on behalf of the Clintons” and warning “what goes around comes around.” The Brennan Center for Justice called the remarks “unprecedented, appalling, deeply improper for a judge.” The Senate confirmed him 50-48 on October 6, 2018 — the narrowest margin for a Supreme Court justice since Stanley Matthews in 1881 — and he was sworn in the same day.

On the Court, Kavanaugh has generally voted with the conservative bloc, favoring executive power and limits on regulatory agencies. In Trump v. United States (July 1, 2024) he joined the majority granting broad presidential immunity — a position critics contrasted with his 2009 Minnesota Law Review writing that “no one is above the law in our system of government” and that presidential litigation should be deferred, not eliminated. One unresolved item from his confirmation: between 2016 and 2017 reported personal debts of roughly $60,000–$200,000 across credit cards and a loan disappeared from his disclosures; the White House attributed the debt to Washington Nationals season-ticket purchases for friends who later reimbursed him, an explanation Senator Whitehouse pressed him on without full resolution.

Sources

1. “Brett Kavanaugh” — Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Kavanaugh
2. “Brett Kavanaugh | Supreme Court, Biography, Controversy, & Facts” — Britannica — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Brett-Kavanaugh
3. “Kavanaugh, Brett M.” — Federal Judicial Center — https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/kavanaugh-brett-m
4. “Brett Kavanaugh confirmed to Supreme Court by smallest margin since 1881” — CBS News (2018) — https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brett-kavanaugh-confirmed-to-supreme-court-by-smallest-margin-in-modern-history/
5. “We Don’t Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right’s Supreme Court Supermajority” — ProPublica — https://www.propublica.org/article/we-dont-talk-about-leonard-leo-supreme-court-supermajority
6. “09-27-18 Ford Testimony.pdf” — Senate Judiciary Committee — https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/09-27-18%20Ford%20Testimony.pdf