Kavanaugh clerk hire casts light on link to judge forced to quit in #MeToo era

Kavanaugh clerk hire casts light on link to judge forced to quit in #MeToo era

Alex Kozinski resigned over allegations of sexual misconduct. His son clerked for Donald Trump’s supreme court pick

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Brett Kavanaugh swears in at a Senate judiciary committee hearing. Photograph:

Last year, before he became a supreme court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh hired the son of a close friend to serve as his clerk, even though the clerk had not earned a spot on the Yale Law Journal, as almost all Kavanaugh’s previous Yale clerks had. The decision to hire Clayton Kozinski, son of the now disgraced judge Alex Kozinski, smacked of the kind of cronyism that is rife in federal courts. It was especially common for Kavanaugh, who not only had a reputation for hiring “model-like” female clerks, but also the children of powerful friends and allies. The move also marked the culmination of a decades-long professional and personal relationship with Alex Kozinski – the first high-profile judge to be forced to resign in the #MeToo era – that had helped launch Kavanaugh’s career.

Attention is now centered on allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh, which he has strenuously denied under oath and are the subject of a new FBI investigation.


But serious concerns about whether Kavanaugh lied under oath have also been raised – publicly and privately – on a topic that has received far less attention in the national spotlight: his insistence that he was shocked when he discovered last year that Kozinski, his mentor and friend, sexually harassed more than a dozen clerks in decades on the bench.

In sworn testimony, Kavanaugh said the revelation – which became public following an exposé in the Washington Post last year that eventually led to Kozinski’s resignation as chief judge of the ninth circuit court of appeals – had been a shocking “gut punch” and deeply disappointing.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/01/kavanaugh-clerk-hire-casts-light-on-link-to-judge-forced-to-resign-in-metoo-era