Former Solicitor General Ken Starr said Friday Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s reputation for judicial temperament is “unblemished” after emotional testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In an interview with CNN’s John Berman on “New Day”, Starr said he supported Kavanaugh’s denials of sexual assault because his record for treating people with respect is “perfect.”
“When you’re under unremitting assault — and I recount this in my book about the Clinton investigation — unremitting, relentless assault, that also goes to your family,” Starr said. “When your children are under death attack, you can’t help as a person, as a human being, to be emotional about it.”
Kavanaugh previously served for three years as a member of Starr’s legal team that investigated President Bill Clinton’s involvement in the Whitewater scandal and relationship with Monica Lewinsky in the 1990s. Starr then went on to lead Baylor University, but left the university after an independent investigation showed a “fundamental failure” to respond adequately to student sex assault allegations.
Starr said he believes Kavanaugh based on the judge’s firmness of his denial and was glad he published a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.
“I don’t look at things in a vacuum, and I think Judge Kavanugh in this op-ed piece, which we’ve all read now, has made some very, I think, thoughtful statements about why he was emotional,” Starr said. “I would be emotional too.”
In the op-ed, Kavanaugh wrote that he is an “independent, impartial judge” and conceding he “might have been too emotional” in his testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.
“I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been,” Kavanaugh wrote in the Journal. “I might have been too emotional at times. I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said. I hope everyone can understand that I was there as a son, husband and dad. I testified with five people foremost in my mind: my mom, my dad, my wife, and most of all my daughters.”
