Brett Kavanaugh “strongly opposed” giving Bill Clinton “any ‘break’” on questions regarding his sexual relationship with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky, according to a memo written by the supreme court nominee in 1998 and released to the public on Monday.
As Washington buzzed over Robert Mueller’s investigation of links between aides to Donald Trump and Russia and the chances of the special counsel being granted a presidential interview, the two-page document was released by the National Archives and Records Administration.
Twenty years ago, Kavanaugh was an associate counsel for the independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who was investigating the president. Writing on 15 August 1998, two days before Clinton testified to a grand jury from the White House, he posed 10 suggested questions about the affair with Lewinsky, many of them sexually explicit.
Kavanaugh also said Clinton had “lied to his aides”, “lied to the American people” and “disgraced … the office” with a “sustained propaganda campaign that would make Nixon blush”.
He was “strongly opposed to giving the president any ‘break’ in the questioning regarding the details of the Lewinsky relationship”, he wrote, unless Clinton “resigns” or “confesses perjury”.
He then suggested a list of questions. One was: “If Monica Lewinsky says that you inserted a cigar into her vagina while you were in the Oval Office area, would she be lying?”
Another: “If Monica Lewinsky says that you ejaculated in her mouth on two occasions in the Oval Office area, would she be lying?”
Kavanaugh also suggested asking Clinton “if Monica Lewinsky says that on several occasions in the Oval Office area, you used your fingers to stimulate her vagina and bring her to orgasm, would she be lying?” and “If Monica Lewinsky says that you masturbated into a trashcan in your secretary’s office, would she be lying?”
Kavanaugh urged that it was the function of the independent counsel to “make [Clinton’s] pattern of revolting behavior clear”.
“The idea of going easy on him at the questioning is thus abhorrent to me,” he wrote.
If successful, Kavanaugh will become Trump’s second appointed justice, tilting the court firmly to the right. His confirmation hearing is set to begin on 4 September and the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has said he wants a floor vote before 1 October.
Republicans and Democrats have clashed over access to documents related to Kavanaugh’s time as a staff member in the George W Bush White House, the release of which is part of the normal vetting process for supreme court nominees.
Democrats have made clear that Kavanaugh’s views on criminal investigations and executive powers will be a key focus of his hearing.
In a 2009 article for the Minnesota Law Review, Kavanaugh cited his experience as part of Starr’s team while arguing that presidents should not be “distracted” by potential criminal investigations while in office.
In the two-page memo released on Monday, he said it was the role of an independent or special counsel to gather and expose the “full facts regarding the actions of this president” for Congress to consider.
“The president has disgraced his office, the legal system, and the American people by having sex with a 22-year-old intern and turning her life into a shambles – callous and disgusting behavior that has somehow gotten lost in the shuffle,” Kavanaugh wrote.
Some details of the memo were previously reported but the document was not published in its entirety until Monday, when it was made public as part of 12,349 pages of records released by the National Archives in response to freedom of information requests.
In a statement, the Archives said the two-page memo was previously made public as part of papers at the Library of Congress belonging to Sam Dash, an ethics adviser to Starr who was also chief counsel to the Senate Watergate committee during the scandal that caused the resignation of Richard Nixon. He died in 2004.
