Kavanaugh once lobbied for judge now handling ethics complaints against him

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Kavanaugh once lobbied for judge now handling ethics complaints against him

Revelation raises concerns about politicization of the supreme court and whether Trump nominee will face disciplinary action

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Critics, legal experts and senators, have said that Kavanaugh’s testimony, in which he lashed out at Democrats over allegations he committed sexual assault, lacked judicial temperament.
Critics, legal experts and senators, have said that Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony, in which he lashed out at Democrats over allegations he committed sexual assault, lacked judicial temperament. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

Supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh once lobbied in support of a controversial judge who is now tasked with reviewing more than a dozen ethics complaints filed against him during his own confirmation process. Emails sent to the Senate judiciary committee and obtained by the Guardian show that beginning in 2001, Kavanaugh was involved in a high-stakes campaign to ensure that Timothy Tymkovich, another staunch conservative and a former Colorado solicitor general, would secure a lifetime appointment as a federal judge. Kavanaugh, who was confirmed to the supreme court this month, worked on the judicial campaign in his role as a senior staff member for President George W Bush. Tymkovich was confirmed in 2003, after a long delay in the Senate. He is now chief judge on the 10th circuit court of appeals, in Colorado.

The revelation could create new concerns about the politicization of the supreme court and cast doubt on whether Kavanaugh will face any formal disciplinary action over his fiery and emotional testimony before the Senate judiciary committee earlier this month. Critics, including hundreds of law professors, legal experts and senators, have said that Kavanaugh’s performance, in which he lashed out at Democrats over allegations he committed sexual assault, lacked judicial temperament. Kavanaugh fiercely denied the sexual assault allegations.

The chief justice of the supreme court, John Roberts, asked Tymkovich to examine more than a dozen judicial ethics complaints filed against Kavanaugh while he was technically still a circuit court judge. The complaints were not sent to Tymkovich until after Kavanaugh was confirmed to sit on the supreme court, where judges are in effect immune to disciplinary action by lower-court justices and are meant to police their own actions. The complaints are not public but according to the Washington Post they allege Kavanaugh lied under oath and that his behaviour before the Senate was ill-suited for a judge.

Some legal experts have questioned whether it was appropriate for Roberts to wait until after Kavanaugh was confirmed to send the ethics complaints for review. But there has been little scrutiny of the man Roberts chose to conduct the review and his past relationship with Kavanaugh.
According to activists and legislative aides who were involved in the Tymkovich nomination battle, the judge was one of several controversial nominations to the federal court when he was chosen by Bush in 2001.Resistance against the nomination was rooted in Tymkovich’s views on gay rights, recalled Kristine Lucius, who was then working for Democratic Vermont senator Patrick Leahy and is now executive vice-president for policy at the Leadership Conference, a civil rights group. “John Roberts and Kavanaugh and Tymkovich are all in the same professional circle,” she said. “They are all tied to the Bush administration and these are all men who certainly knew each other and now are in very powerful positions on the bench.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/22/brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court-tim-tymkovich-ethics-complaints