the Department of Justice. Kavanaugh’s team had encouraged the senator to be more specific—the department is part of the executive branch, after all, and so accountable to the president—and ask about particular decisions, but he did not want to narrow the scope of his question. Unsatisfied with Kavanaugh’s response at the hearing, Flake submitted a similar question in writing: “Should a president be able to use his authority to pressure executive or independent agencies to carry out his directives for purely political purposes?”
Kavanaugh’s response carefully threaded the needle. He began by noting that no one, including the president, is above the law. While he acknowledged that political leadership of agencies is expected and appropriate, good political leaders should follow the “principle that everything the Government does must be based on sound legal principles and a legitimate factual basis.” It is the courts that must remain independent of political considerations, he wrote, citing his opinion in Hamdan v United States, which contradicted a strongly held view of his previous boss, George W. Bush.3
A first draft of Kavanaugh’s answers to all the questions was completed in twelve hours and sent to Brett Talley, who was working with Michel and Murray at the White House. A former deputy assistant attorney general (and prolific author of Lovecraftian horror novels), Talley had accumulated invaluable institutional knowledge working on Supreme Court appointments in the Bush administration and, more recently, on Gorsuch’s nomination. Getting Kavanaugh confirmed was personal for him. He had been nominated for a district court judgeship in September 2017, but his confirmation went down in a storm of partisan attacks. Throughout the confirmation process, Talley had managed to dodge the press, lest some reporter recognize him and stir up controversy. The indispensable bridge between the legal minds and the communications people, he was also valued for what one colleague called his “buoyant spirit.”
The White House team began reviewing and tweaking the answers, sending them in batches to Kavanaugh when they were ready for him to review with his signature black Sharpie, sending edits to the clerks for incorporation into the final document. The last questions were on his desk by noon on Tuesday. That night, the White House group, including Talley, Murray, and Michel, returned to chambers, where they found Kavanaugh going over each answer in detail. To keep him from getting bogged down, Talley told the judge that if he divided the time left by the number of questions, he had only about two minutes per response, and that wasn’t allowing time for sleep or even a bathroom break. It was a grueling pace.
Kavanaugh had run marathons before and knew the kind of focus that was needed. He reviewed the answer to every single question, ensuring not only its accuracy—the smallest slip might expose him to a perjury charge—but that it met his high standards. The task of responding to nearly 1,300 questions in two days was abusive, but there was no option but to complete it. The group ordered pizzas and settled in for yet another all-night work session.
When Wednesday arrived, Kavanaugh was still working, and Talley was nervous about getting the final answers. They were starting to roll in late in the day when Raj Shah turned to Talley and said, “Hey, have you ever heard of The Intercept?” He hadn’t.
The online news publication, which describes itself as “adversarial,” is owned by Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire founder of eBay, and edited by Glenn Greenwald. It gained notoriety in 2013 by publishing documents released by the National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden.
On the evening of Wednesday, September 12, The Intercept published a report by Ryan Grim that Senator Feinstein possessed a letter from a California constituent that described “an incident involving Kavanaugh and a woman while they were in high school.” Committee Democrats wanted to view the letter, but Feinstein declined. The letter writer was a client of Debra Katz, a lawyer known for representing women who accused powerful men of sexual harassment.4
The Kavanaugh team were so focused on answering the committee’s written questions that they first assumed this was a Democratic ploy to get them off track. And in any case, unsubstantiated allegations were a regular part of the confirmation process. Some members of the team recalled a rumor they had heard from a source close to liberal activists about a three-part plan to prevent Kavanaugh’s confirmation. First, someone would accuse him of sexual misconduct. Second, someone would accuse him of knowing something specific about Judge Kozinski’s sexual misdeeds. Third, someone