The confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have been most notable for what Kavanaugh has refused to say: what he believes to be the correct law on abortion rights, gay rights, same-sex marriage, presidential executive authority, immigration, and a host of other timely subjects. "One of the major concerns with Brett Kavanaugh is that Trump might have nominated him specifically because Kavanaugh believes sitting presidents shouldn't be subpoenaed or indicted," Trevor Noah said on Thursday's Daily Show. "And some people are worried that Kavanaugh might even have made a deal with Trump's [former] personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, basically saying we'll put you on the court if you promise to protect the president from Robert Mueller."
"Now, we don't know if Kavanaugh actually met with Trump's lawyer, but when California Sen. Kamala Harris asked him about it yesterday, Kavanaugh did himself no favors," Noah said, playing part of their intense and kind of bizarre back-and-forth. "Wow, Kavanaugh did not look good in that exchange. It's like if they asked a suspect at a murder trial, 'Where were you on the night of the 13th?' and he was like, 'Uhhh, where shouldn't I have been? Wherever the murder happened, that's where I was.'" Noah was not persuaded by Kavanaugh hiding behind "precedent" to avoid answering questions on abortion rights, but he was impressed with Harris' pointed question to him on that subject.
In Thursday's hearings, Kavanaugh acknowledged that he was friends with one lawyer at Kasowitz Benson Torres, Ed McNally, but insisted he'd had no "inappropriate conversations about that investigation with anyone." A spokesman for the law firm said Thursday that "there have been no discussions regarding Robert Mueller's investigation between Judge Kavanaugh and anyone at our firm." Theoretically, any conversation of the Mueller investigation Kavanaugh had with Kasowitz's firm could be grounds for him to have to recuse himself in any case involving the Trump-Russia investigation.
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