Huffman town hall questions views of Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh

Aug. 29--President Donald Trump's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court is disturbing because of his "unitary executive" position -- or support for complete control of the executive branch -- and because most of his past records have not yet been released to Congress and the public, a constitutional law expert said Tuesday.

"Judge (Brett) Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings are supposed to start next week (Sept. 4), and only 2 percent of his record has been made available," said Caroline Frederickson, president of the American Constitution Society for Law & Policy, before about 400 people at a town hall led by Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael. "He has a deeply held view of presidential power (being above the law)."

Frederickson, one of three panelists at the event at College of Marin's Kentfield campus, said although the recent guilty pleas and convictions of Trump associates and other investigations are dominating the news, "the Supreme Court is where these cases may all get decided -- in a way that is not reviewable.

"The Supreme Court has the final say," Frederickson said.

Huffman, introducing the theme "Holding the President Accountable," said there must be checks and balances on presidential power.

"I am concerned that Donald Trump's actions in flouting the law, norms and institutions of our democracy are unlike anything we have ever seen from a president," Huffman said. "I believe that unless he is held accountable, his presidency could actually pose an existential threat to our democracy and to the rule of law."

Huffman foe

Republican Dale Mensing of Garberville, Huffman's challenger for the Second District congressional seat in the Nov. 6 elections, said in an interview Tuesday he supported both Kavanaugh and Trump because they share his views on preserving the Bill of Rights.

Specifically, he said, he would support a potential Kavanaugh vote to overturn the landmark abortion rights decision Roe vs. Wade, would uphold the right to bear arms and approves, like Trump, of stronger U.S. borders.

"I am for defending the integrity of the Bill of Rights -- particularly the second, fifth and 10th amendments," said Mensing, who describes himself as the "ultimate conservative."

He added that he has heard that a larger percentage of Kavanaugh's records have been released than Frederickson described.

"It depends on who you talk to," he said from his job as a cashier at Shop Smart Food Warehouse in Redway.

According to Frederickson, the person in charge of releasing the documents on Kavanaugh is a former colleague of the judge during the Bush administration and was once a private attorney for former presidential adviser Steve Bannon.

Civil discourse

Huffman's other two panelists were Audrey Cooper, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, and Melinda Haag, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California. They all urged the public to stay alert and subscribe to credible news sources to avoid "fake news."

"Truly made up news can be difficult to spot," Cooper said. "You have to get a lot of different viewpoints (in the news) that you trust -- Twitter and Facebook are not too trustworthy." She said the public should rely on news sources where there can be a civil discourse -- and that specifically excludes Twitter and Facebook, she said.

She said people in power are taking advantage of working families' busy lives and short attention spans to "weaponize social media" in order to discredit public institutions and to disparage honest, ethical media operations.

"There is no such thing as a right to an uninformed opinion," Cooper said.

Mueller probe

Haag, who has known now-Special Counsel Robert Mueller since 1999 and who has been friends with many of the prosecutors, FBI officials and others now in the news every day, was asked for her best guess as to when Mueller's investigation into Russia's tampering with the U.S. elections in 2016 would be completed. She said she didn't know definitively, but estimated sometime within the next six months to a year.

"It's going extraordinarily fast," she said. Meanwhile, she said, the daily presidential Twitter posts disparaging Mueller "are astounding to me," as are the White House calls that the Mueller investigation is a "witch hunt."

"What we're experiencing is not normal," Haag said. "When I worked for (former U.S. Attorney General) Eric Holder, we all checked our politics at the door. We never had interference (from the White House)."

Huffman said more needs to be done to push back.

"It's my conclusion that all of us -- regular citizens, elected officials, legal scholars, attorneys, journalists -- all of us have to step up and do more to protect our democracy, our democratic institutions and the rule of law."

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