Brett Kavanaugh's newly revealed 1998 questions for Bill Clinton are decidedly NSFW

On Monday, the National Archives released an August 1998 memo Brett Kavanaugh wrote to his boss, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, slamming President Bill Clinton and posing 10 questions he wanted Starr's investigators to ask Clinton. Seven of the 10 questions sought confirmation of graphic details about Clinton's affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, including questions about oral sex and masturbation. The memo also reflected the growing tensions between Clinton and Starr's office — Kavanaugh, now President Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court, was an associate counsel.

"I am strongly opposed to giving the president any 'break' in the questioning regarding the details of the Lewinsky relationship" unless he "resigns" or "confesses perjury," Kavanaugh wrote to Starr. He criticized Clinton's "frivolous privilege claims" and said "he has lied to his aides. He has lied to the American people. He has tried to disgrace you and this office with a sustained propaganda campaign that would make Nixon blush."

The strident tenor and vulgar content of the memo provide "a contrast to the genial, soft-spoken nominee who chooses every word carefully as he makes the rounds of the Senate before his Sept. 4 hearing before the Judiciary Committee," says The Washington Post, which obtained the memo through a Freedom of Information Act request. It also highlights the stark evolution Kavanaugh has gone through from backing vigorous prosecution of presidents to arguing, after five years in the George W. Bush White House, that presidents should only be prosecuted after they leave office.

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This shift, newly relevant as Trump clashes with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, will likely be raised during Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings. "Either his views really have changed over time to reflect far more of a belief in the importance of protecting presidential prerogative," University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck tells the Post, "or his views on presidential prerogative differ depending on what he thinks about the current officeholder."