Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice for the second time on Oct. 8 after a prolonged confirmation hearing.
WASHINGTON—Brett Kavanaugh was already sworn in as a Supreme Court justice on Oct. 6, but the White House held another swearing-in ceremony for him with the president in attendance on Oct. 8 after a prolonged confirmation hearing.
Addressing a packed East Room, President Donald Trump introduced his nominee with an apology.
“On behalf of our nation, I want to apologize to Brett and the entire Kavanaugh family for the terrible pain and suffering you have been forced to endure,” Trump said. “What happened to the Kavanaugh family violates every notion of fairness, decency, and due process. [In] our country, a man or a woman must always be presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. And with that I must state that you sir, under historic scrutiny, were proven innocent.”
Kavanaugh went through 32 hours of testimony, had hundreds of thousands of pages of his writing examined, and faced three last-minute accusations of sexual misconduct before he was approved by the Senate in a 50-48 vote on Oct. 6. From the start, Democrats vowed to block his nomination, and almost succeeded by withholding an allegation of sexual misconduct until shortly before the Senate was scheduled to vote on his nomination.
Kavanaugh thanked Trump for standing by him throughout the hearings, but made it clear that he would not let the politics of the nomination process influence his judgement on the bench.
He acknowledged in a Wall Street Journal op-ed shortly after his testimony that the confirmation process had “tested” him. Kavanaugh had become visibly emotional as he defended himself against sexual assault allegations by Christine Blasey Ford.
Despite Kavanaugh’s insistence that the Supreme Court is not partisan, a judge’s views on issues often fall along partisan lines. Kavanaugh succeeds retiring conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, who paved the road for a conservative successor by resigning under a President Trump. While considered conservative, Kennedy sided with liberal judges on certain social issues, often making him a deciding swing vote.
In attendance at the ceremony was White House Counsel Don McGahn, who has been working on the nominations of federal judges for the White House. Trump announced McGahn’s decision to resign back in August, but McGahn delayed his exit until Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
Also in attendance was Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who Trump told reporters earlier in the day would stay on at the Justice Department. His employment at the DOJ came under question after a report said he had talked about secretly recording the president—allegations that Rosenstein denies.
