Brett Kavanaugh and the men who say nothing

Brett Kavanaugh, Supreme Court candidate facing multiple charges of sexual misconduct, on the shoulders of some of the most powerful and influential misogynists in the country.

The man who appointed him to the Supreme Court is Donald Trump, himself accused by more than a dozen women of sexual misconduct. Her high school classmate is Mark Judge, a well-known conservative writer whose writings reveal a deep disdain for women and especially feminists.

But perhaps one of the most influential personalities in Kavanaugh's career is his long-time mentor, Alex Kozinski, a famous federal judge who resigned last December after many women have come forward describe her sexual harassment and misconduct.

Kavanaugh firmly stated that he knew nothing about Kozinski's behavior and that he could not remember anything wrong with him. However, given the overwhelming evidence accumulated about Kozinski, Kavanaugh's denial seems absurd.

"Everyone knew it," writes longtime legal columnist Dahlia Lithwick for Slate, explaining that she had experience with Kozinski since the late 1990s.

"There is no way for Kavanaugh not to know," HuffPost recently told a man who occupied Kozinski more than ten years ago. Others asked how Kavanaugh could have disregarded the judge's sexism and misconduct.

The former clerk is the rare man to talk about Kozinski – most of the judge's accusers are women. Indeed, this man says that he even took the almost unheard-of step of telling Kozinkski that his behavior was inappropriate.

During her internship, Kozinski showed her a video of naked women skydiving, he told HuffPost. "He thought it was hilarious to see their breasts" giving way "back and forth," he recalls.

The former employee refused to be named to HuffPost for confidentiality reasons, but Catharine MacKinnon, a prominent professor at the University of Michigan Law School, first conceptualized the concept of sexual harassment in the legal system, confirmed his story.

"He talked about hearing from the chambers things that Judge Kozinski said I remember very well were sexually salacious," she said, adding that the judge had made this man extremely uncomfortable. The former clerk was MacKinnon's research assistant a few years ago.

Men were not usually safe from Kozinski's jokes. The former clerk remembered that while Kozinski was Evaluating the application of a woman who was second in her class at the University of California at Berkeley Law School, the judge described her as the kind of woman who would only give you that. 39, a handjob.

Even as a spectator, the former employee said he was offended.

"He thought it was discriminatory, harassing everyone in the rooms. He was absolutely horrified and tried to convey his lack of pleasure to the judge, "MacKinnon said.

The former clerk said that he had arranged a meeting with Kozinski to confront him directly, telling him that these comments about women were too loud and that the general atmosphere seemed abusive.

He said that Kozinski responded by saying, "How do you know if a woman has an orgasm?" The answer: "We do not care".

The message was: Kozinski did not care.

A week later, the law clerk resigned.

He tried to get another internship, but found that Kozinski had thrown roadblocks, he said.

"Suddenly, he had no prospect," MacKinnon said. "He struggled professionally for a while trying to recover."

MacKinnon said she had never recommended Kozinski to students seeking coveted law internships.

The story of the former clerk is a great example of why someone like Kavanaugh, an ultra-ambitious lawyer on the trail of the Supreme Court, would never admit to what his mentor really looked like.

This kind of complicity is the way the stalkers stay in power.

Kavanaugh was busy with Kozinski in 1991 and stayed in close touch with him over the years. They co-wrote at least one book and sat together on panels. They even helped Supreme Court justice clerks Anthony Kennedy play an extremely influential role.

"The judge and the law clerk are actually tied together by an invisible cordon for the rest of their careers," wrote Kozinski in an article titled "Confessions of a Bad Apple," published in the Yale Law Review. him.

Kozinski, of course, is the ultimate judicial judge.

Fifteen women, including one judge and several former court clerks, testified The Washington Post Last year, Kozinski, named by Reagan on the country's biggest federal court, showed them pornographic images in his apartments, made grossly inappropriate comments, and bombed their breasts.

Heidi Bond, who worked for Kozinski at 2006 and 2007, described how the judge showed his pictures of naked people, asking if she was on.

"When I arrived in the room, the outgoing clerks suggested that we watch The aristocrats, a documentary about a notorious dirty joke, to prepare us for the next year, "said Bond, who left the legal profession, writes in Slate recently.

"Having been employed in her apartments, I do not know how it would be possible to forget something as widespread as Kozinski's famous sense of sexual humor," she said.

Kozinski was one of the few federal judges known to have provided clerks to the Supreme Court. If you got a job with him, you got a golden ticket for a prestigious legal career in the United States.

Indeed, after Kavanaugh's term ended with Kozinski, he continued working for Justice Anthony Kennedy in the High Court and then skipped the path of his current appointment.

To cross Kozinski would certainly have put an end to all this.

Even if we take Kavanaugh to the word that he did not know that one of his most important professional contacts was a serial abuser, this begs a crucial question: does he understand what the "look" looks like? sexual misconduct?

"Who knows what kind of sexual harassment Kavanaugh will have the opportunity to say over the next 30 years?", Writes Elie Mistal Above the law this summer. "That the man can even recognize sexual harassment WHEN HE SEES, it is relevant."