A new book from CNN’s senior Supreme Court analyst claims that some Supreme Court justices felt used and tricked by then-President Donald Trump when he assured them that the White House event after Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation would not be political only to turn around and use the event to slam those who smeared Kavanaugh during his confirmation, according to the UK Guardian.
In her book “Nine Back Robes: Inside the Supreme Court’s Drive to the Right and its Historic Consequences,” CNN analyst Joan Biskupic claims that most of the justices sat through the White House event stone-faced, with some telling her that they regretted attending.
The justices who spoke to Biskupic allegedly claimed that they “felt tricked” into participating in a politicized event at a time when they were trying to show that they were “impartial guardians of justice” instead of “tools of Republican interests.”
According to the Guardian, which received advanced excerpts, after Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court, the White House held an event on October 8, 2018, in which then-President Trump railed against the treatment Kavanaugh and his family faced during his confirmation, saying the smears violated “every notion” of due process, fairness, and decency. Trump argued Kavanaugh was “proven innocent” of the accusations against him.
But because Biskupic is a CNN analyst, she points out in her book that Kavanaugh’s innocence wasn’t proven because “there had been no trial” nor was there “even much of an investigation” into the claims made by Christine Blasey Ford. Biskupic adds that the truth doesn’t matter to Trump or his supporters.
Biskupic claims in her book that while the rest of the justices were stone-faced during the event, Justice Clarence Thomas was “conspicuously enthusiastic” because he clapped after Brett Kavanaugh’s remarks.
She notes in her book that Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec later said that Justice Thomas was “the life of the party” during the White House event.
