Chief Justice John Roberts Accused of ‘Cover Up’ for Sitting on Kavanaugh Misconduct Complaints, FBI’s Kavanaugh review was limited from the start, The New York Times reports

-  Chief Justice John Roberts Accused of ‘Cover Up’ for Sitting on Kavanaugh Misconduct Complaints

-  FBI’s Kavanaugh review was limited from the start, The New York Times reports

-  D.C. Circuit sent complaints about Kavanaugh’s testimony to Chief Justice Roberts

-  Anti-Kavanaugh protesters keep up the fight, even after he's confirmed

Chief Justice John Roberts Accused of ‘Cover Up’ for Sitting on Kavanaugh Misconduct Complaints
by Colin Kalmbacher October 6th, 2018

 

 

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has received over a dozen official judicial misconduct complaints leveled against U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Court Judge and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

 

So far he has not forwarded the complaints to a proper judicial panel. Now, some critics are calling foul and accusing Roberts of mounting a cover-up in favor of the controversial Supreme Court nominee.

 

Those official misconduct complaints were forwarded to Roberts by a fellow member of Kavanaugh’s court. While U.S. Circuit Judge Merrick Garland would traditionally have overseen those complaints, Garland chose to recuse himself on the matter, according to Buzzfeed News.

 

In his stead, U.S. Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson fielded the multiple complaints against Kavanaugh. Judge Henderson dismissed many complaints filed against the Supreme Court nominee as “frivolous,” but found substantial merit in over a dozen of the complaints she reviewed.

 

According to the Washington Post, Henderson began forwarding the complaints she deemed valid onto Roberts. Henderson sent them to Roberts so that Kavanaugh’s fellow judges on the D.C. Circuit would not have to assess the serious and substantive issues raised against a colleague.

 

In a statement released early on Saturday afternoon, Judge Henderson noted, “Under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act (28 U.S.C. §§351-364) any person may file a misconduct complaint against a federal judge in the circuit in which the federal judge sits. After the start of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, members of the general public began filing complaints in the D.C. Circuit about statements made during those hearings.”

 

Henderson’s statement continued, clarifying the conduct at issue. She wrote, “The complaints do not pertain to any conduct in which Judge Kavanaugh engaged as a judge. The complaints seek investigations only of the public statements he has made as a nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States.”....

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/chief-justice-john-roberts-accused-of-cover-up-for-sitting-on-kavanaugh-misconduct-complaints/

 

 

FBI’s Kavanaugh review was limited from the start, The New York Times reports

The FBI’s review of Brett Kavanaugh’s background check was limited from the start, The New York Times reports. Joy Reid and her panel discuss the impact reportedly restricting the investigation’s scope may have had on its findings.
https://www.msnbc.com/am-joy/watch/fbi-s-kavanaugh-review-was-limited-from-the-start-the-new-york-times-reports-1338382915520

 

D.C. Circuit sent complaints about Kavanaugh’s testimony to Chief Justice Roberts

By Carol D. Leonnig , Ann E. Marimow and Tom Hamburger October 6

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has received more than a dozen judicial misconduct complaints in recent weeks against Brett M. Kavanaugh, who was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice Saturday, but has chosen for the time being not to refer them to a judicial panel for investigation.

 

A judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit — the court on which Kavanaugh serves — passed on to Roberts a string of complaints the court received starting three weeks ago, said four people familiar with the matter.

That judge, Karen LeCraft Henderson, had dismissed other complaints against Kavanaugh as frivolous, but she concluded that some were substantive enough that they should not be handled by Kavanaugh’s fellow judges in the D.C. Circuit.

 

In a statement Saturday, Henderson said the complaints centered on statements Kavanaugh made during his Senate confirmation hearings.

Under the law, “any person may file a misconduct complaint in the circuit in which the federal judge sits,” she said in the statement. “The complaints do not pertain to any conduct in which Judge Kavanaugh engaged as a judge. The complaints seek investigations only of the public statements he has made as a nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States.”....

 

People familiar with the matter say the allegations made in the complaints — that Kavanaugh was dishonest and lacked judicial temperament during his Senate testimony — had already been widely discussed in the Senate and in the public realm. Roberts did not see an urgent need for them to be resolved by the judicial branch while he continued to review the incoming complaints, they said.

 

The situation is highly unusual, said legal experts and several people familiar with the matter. Never before has a Supreme Court nominee been poised to join the court while a fellow judge recommends that misconduct claims against that nominee warrant review.

 

Roberts’s decision not to immediately refer the cases to another appeals court has caused some concern in the legal community. Now that he has been confirmed, the details of the complaints may not become public and instead may be dismissed, legal experts say. Supreme Court justices are not subject to the misconduct rules governing these claims.

 

“If Justice Roberts sits on the complaints, then they will reside in a kind of purgatory and will never be adjudicated,” said Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University Law School and an expert on Supreme Court ethics. “This is not how the rules anticipated the process would work.”....

 

Roberts, an appointee of President George W. Bush, has for many years hired Kavanaugh clerks to work for him at the Supreme Court. Bush credits Kavanaugh in his book with helping him choose Roberts for the high court when Kavanaugh was a White House lawyer.

 

Normally, misconduct complaints are confidential and do not become public until they are fully investigated and concluded.

 

Most of these complaints center on Kavanaugh’s answers about his work in the Bush administration, according to people familiar with them. They also accuse Kavanaugh of lacking judicial temperament in his partisan comments about Democrats, the people said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/dc-circuit-sent-complaints-about-kavanaughs-testimony-to-chief-justice-roberts/2018/10/06/c7e7b526-c8d0-11e8-b1ed-1d2d65b86d0c_story.html 

 

 

 

Anti-Kavanaugh protesters keep up the fight, even after he's confirmed
By Ralph Ellis, CNN Sat October 6, 2018

CNN)Protesters opposed to Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the US Supreme Court swarmed over Washington on Saturday -- massing at the Capitol, disrupting the confirmation vote in the Senate and banging on the Supreme Court building doors when Kavanaugh arrived to be sworn in.

About 5:45 p.m. ET Saturday, a large crowd of protesters surged onto the front steps of the Supreme Court, chanting, "Hey hey, ho ho, Kavanaugh has got to go."

After police pushed them back from the doors, the demonstrators held signs and chanted, "No justice, no peace," and "We believe Anita Hill," a reference to the woman who accused Justice Clarence Thomas of misconduct.

It's not known if Kavanaugh heard the protesters. Police cleared the steps of the court about 6:15 p.m. and set up barriers.

 

Protesters stood one by one in different sections of the gallery, most with their fists raised, and yelled "I will not consent."

 

"The sergeant-at-arms will restore order in the gallery," the presiding officer, Vice President Mike Pence, said several times.

Police forcibly removed the protesters, with one person dragged out by their arms and legs. They kept screaming as they were pulled into the hallway.
Crowds started forming around 9 a.m. ET outside the Capitol building and the Supreme Court building and grew through the morning.

Protesters occupied the Rotunda Steps on the East Front of the US Capitol early Saturday afternoon, with about 150 of them being arrested, Capitol Police said in a news release. Video showed them lined up, with wrists cuffed behind their backs on the Capitol lawn. Police cleared the steps and the Capitol Plaza, and the protesters headed back to the Supreme Court....

 

A demonstration scheduled for Saturday outside Collins' office in Portland, Maine, was canceled.

A group gathered there Friday and fell silent when she announced her decision, CNN affiliate WGME reported.

"It's just this feeling of being utterly ignored," Jenny O'Connell of Portland told WGME on Friday. "Susan Collins just made a huge choice to ignore her constituents and survivors (of sexual assault)." https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/06/politics/kavanaugh-protests/index.html