New Kavanaugh Disclosure shows little sign of hindering his appointment

And opponents of Kavanaugh said they did not anticipate that the problem would come to the fore unless the woman agreed to cooperate. Members of both parties said the situation was complicated by the fact that it was alleged that everyone involved was in high school. In contrast, the charges against Justice Thomas concerned the behavior of adults as supervisors of federal agencies.

But the Democrats certainly have problems that they would like to deepen about Judge Kavanaugh. On Thursday, they tried to name people and documents related to events of his years at the White House about which they thought he was not honest. Republican committees have blocked these efforts in a summary way.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, tried to convince the committee to collect testimony from former Republican Senate assistants involved in efforts to unduly gain thousands of private Democrat documents on the computers of the Judiciary Committee between 2001 and 2001. and 2003 candidates for the judiciary.

The documents published by the committee showed that Judge Kavanaugh, then White House lawyer involved in appointment issues, had exchanged information with Manuel Miranda, a Senate assistant who had obtained and disseminated some of the information.

Judge Kavanaugh told the commission that he had no idea that any information was obtained inappropriately – an assertion that sparked skepticism among Democratic senators. In particular, his assertion that bipartite exchanges on the appointment strategy were common and that the "currency of the realm" in the judicial struggles provoked a brutal reaction from the former Democratic staff members of the committee. They said it was far from the case during the bitter clashes over the candidates in the early years of the Bush administration.

"This is just not true when it comes to fighting for judicial candidates," said Kristine Lucius, former counsel to Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat and a senior member of the committee. "This episode was not normal."

The computer breach – and the potential benefit to the Bush administration at the time – is particularly bleak with some Democrats on the panel. Judge Kavanaugh's initial confirmation hearing for the Court of Appeal was held in April 2004, approximately one month after the release of a Senate inquiry into the incident. The Democrats believe that Judge Kavanaugh might not have survived this review if the available documents were now available.

Both Judge Thomas and Justice Gorsuch survived volatile accusations of their conduct as the confirmation process entered the final stages and eventually went to the Supreme Court. Unless further charges pile up against Judge Kavanaugh, it seems likely that he will join them soon.