is half-Mexican and half-Jewish and her grandparents were Holocaust survivors.31 Nonetheless, many major news outlets, including Time and the Washington Post, reported on the conspiracy theory, fanning the flames on social media.32 If the first day of the Kavanaugh hearings was a circus, the “white power” Twitter follies proved to be the most appalling sideshow.
On Wednesday, Senator Leahy began a line of questioning that would continue over the next two days. He wanted to know about emails Kavanaugh had received when he was at the Bush White House from Manuel Miranda, then a Senate Judiciary Committee staffer. In 2001, Miranda discovered sensitive Democratic memoranda that had been left on a server shared with Republicans. One of them, which was leaked in 2003, revealed that Democrats were blocking Miguel Estrada’s confirmation to the D.C. Circuit because he was Hispanic.
Kavanaugh had already been asked in his appellate court confirmation hearings in 2004 and 2006 if he knew about this security lapse. He said he didn’t and wanted to make it clear that he had never seen the memoranda. If he received information from those documents, he said, he did not know how it was obtained. Now, on day two of his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, he was asked the same questions.
Leahy began, ominously, by asking if he wanted to change anything from his previous testimony. Kavanaugh said he did not. Leahy noted that in previous hearings he had been asked more than a hundred questions about the memoranda and had denied knowing anything about how Miranda gained the information. “My question is this: Did Mr. Miranda ever provide you with highly specific information regarding what I or other Democratic senators were planning on asking certain judicial nominees?” Leahy asked this question twice. Kavanaugh explained that such exchanges of information were quite common between staff on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the White House during a confirmation process.
Leahy then informed Kavanaugh that among the documents marked “committee confidential” was “evidence that Mr. Miranda provided you with materials that were stolen from me. And that would contradict your prior testimony.” He asked Grassley to make the documents public. During the Gorsuch confirmation, Grassley had asked senators to alert him if they wanted any confidential documents released for use in the hearings. For Kavanaugh, Democratic senators were making outlandish requests, such as every document related to executive power or the environment. When Senator Klobuchar asked for four specific and relevant documents to be released for the hearing, Grassley made a show of thanking her for following an appropriate process. The Democratic strategy had been obstruction at all costs, so Klobuchar was annoyed at repeatedly being singled out for being cooperative and reasonable. At one point, Democratic staff accidentally shared with Republican staff their “hot list” of Kavanaugh documents they would eventually publicize through different senators. After sending the email that identified all of the documents they felt were most sensitive, the Democrats told the Republican staff to ignore the email. It was valuable information, even if Republican staff had already flagged most of the same documents. In any case, for Leahy’s request, Grassley obtained clearance from both the Bush and Trump White House staffs to make the documents available the next day.
Leahy’s smoking gun was nowhere to be found. The emails contained discussions about judicial nominees and required some contextual parsing, but nothing indicated that Kavanaugh had reason to suspect that Miranda had obtained the information improperly.33
In response to questions from Senator Graham, Kavanaugh twice mentioned a book that would have more significance in the weeks to come. In the sixth grade he had studied To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s novel about a man wrongly accused of rape. He kept his old copy of the book in his chambers as a reminder of the importance of not judging others and of empathizing with the accused and downtrodden.
The next attempt to paint Kavanaugh as a perjurer was a baffling line of questioning by Senator Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor who was preparing to run for president. She began by asking Kavanaugh if he had ever discussed Robert Mueller, the independent counsel then investigating the Trump presidential campaign, with anyone. He explained that he used to work with Mueller. She asked if he had ever discussed Mueller’s investigation. He said he had. Then she asked repeatedly if he had ever had any discussions with employees of Kasowitz, Benson & Torres, the firm of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz. As though she had him right where