The 33-year-old lawyer said investigators had a truth-seeking function distinct from determining whether Clinton broke the law.
A memo Brett Kavanaugh wrote two decades ago with graphic detail about President Bill Clinton’s conduct with Monica Lewinsky became public Monday, showing the Supreme Court nominee was adamant that independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s team had a responsibility to “make his pattern of revolting behavior clear.”
Two days before Clinton testified to a grand jury via a video feed from the White House, Kavanaugh urged Starr and other lawyers on his staff to take a tough line regarding the president’s behavior, according to the memo released by the National Archives and Records Administration.
The 33-year-old lawyer said the investigators had a truth-seeking function distinct from determining whether Clinton broke the law. The memo also is full of his moral judgment of the president’s conduct.
The release comes as special counsel Robert Mueller is negotiating with the White House over a possible interview with Donald Trump in his investigation into whether the president’s 2016 campaign aided Russia in its efforts to intervene in the election.
“The idea of going easy on him at the questioning is…abhorrent to me,” Kavanaugh wrote in the two-page memo, which was sent to Starr and all other attorneys on his staff on August 15,1998. “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… He has tried to disgrace you and this Office with a sustained propaganda campaign that would make Nixon blush.”
“He should be forced to account for all of that and to defend his actions,” Kavanaugh added in a bold font. “It may not be our job to impose sanctions on him, but it is our job to make his pattern of revolting behavior clear — piece by painful piece — on Monday.”
The memo goes on to list 10 questions he proposed for Clinton, six of which are explicit and several of which were extraordinarily graphic.
Among the questions:
“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?”
“If Monica Lewinsky says that on several occasions you had her give oral sex, made her stop, and then ejaculated into the sink in the bathroom of the Oval Office, would she be lying?”
“If Monica Lewinsky says that you masturbated into a trashcan in your secretary’s office, would she be lying?”
Portions of the memo were first revealed by author Ken Gormley in a 2010 book, “The Death of American Virtue: Clinton v. Starr.” However, the document was not published in its entirety until Monday, when it was released by the National Archives along with other Kavanaugh-related files from Starr’s office.
The records are part of a broader set of documents Democrats and Republicans are tussling over in advance of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, set to begin Sept. 4.
A statement from the Archives said the memo was made public in papers at the Library of Congress belonging to Sam Dash, an ethics adviser to Starr who died in 2004.
