THREAD. "Perjury" claims against Judge Brett Kavanaugh re: NSA surveillance.
1. I've done long threads on claims that Kavanaugh "perjured" himself re: Pryor & #Memogate. This thread will be shorter. #SCOTUS #KavanaghHearing #KavanaughConfirmationHearings
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4. Still here? Okay, if you're not behind the
@NYTimes paywall or too lazy to read ten paragraphs, here's a longer version.Show this thread -
5. At Kavanaugh's 2006 confirmation hearing,
@SenatorLeahy asked whether Kavanaugh had seen, in his role as@WhiteHouse Staff Secretary, docs about "the president’s N.S.A. warrantless wiretapping program.” Transcript: http://bit.ly/2MWxm4p .Show this thread -
6. Kavanaugh: "Senator, I learned of that program when there was a New York Times story." The program, code-named "Stellarwind," was revealed by
@NYTimes in 12/05: https://nyti.ms/2QaVoX8 .Show this thread -
7. Citing this 9/17/01 email from Kavanaugh to John Yoo, asking about results of research into the 4th Amendment and surveillance,
@SenatorLeahy argues that Kavanaugh's 2006 testimony was false:pic.twitter.com/ZtQp4mFysZ
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8. What was the 9/17/01 email about? Per the Times, it related to a 9/17/01 memo by Jonn Yoo to Timothy Flanagan, then deputy
@WhiteHouse counsel, entitled "Constitutional Standards on Random Electronic Surveillance for Counter-Terrorism Purposes."Show this thread -
9. The 9/17/01 Yoo-to-Flanagan memo and the 9/17/01 Kavanaugh-to-Yoo email, per the Times (but emphasis mine), "explored a HYPOTHETICAL warrantless surveillance program" -- i.e., NOT the subsequent actual program, Stellarwind.
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10. Yes, some of the 9/17/01 research eventually made its way into
#Stellarwind authorization -- but Kavanaugh wasn't privy to that, since he was no longer in the loop at that point.Show this thread -
11. Why? Because as Yoo explained to
@NYTimes, “Kavanaugh was not cleared to know about Stellarwind or any other counterterrorism surveillance program that I worked on while at@TheJusticeDept."https://nyti.ms/2CtpfakShow this thread -
12. See also
@Neal_Katyal (liberal lawyer and former Acting Solicitor General under President Obama): "Leahy suggesting J. Kavanaugh knew about NSA wiretapping earlier than he testified in 2006 that he did. This is going to be easy to verify."Show this thread -
13. Why? Per Katyal: "There is always a record of everyone read into highly classified SCI programs & you even have to sign a ledger."https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1037364512901554177 …
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14. As already noted, Kavanaugh was not "read into" Stellarwind, and his signature does not appear in the ledger. His 2006 testimony was accurate; he did not see "docs about 'the president’s N.S.A. warrantless wiretapping program'" prior to the Times story.
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15. One other point, made by
@RajShah45 this week: the 2006 questions related to what docs Kavanaugh had seen "as staff secretary,” a role Kavanaugh didn't assume until 2003 - i.e., well after the 9/17/01 email and memo traffic.Show this thread -
16. What about Kavanaugh's latest testimony, in his
#SCOTUS confirmation hearings? This week,@SenatorLeahy posed different, more general questions.Show this thread -
17. This time around,
@SenatorLeahy pressed Kavanaugh "to say whether he had ever raised questions 'about the constitutional implications of a warrantless surveillance program' with Mr. Yoo in 2001," per@NYTimes.https://nyti.ms/2CtpfakShow this thread -
18. Kavanaugh said that "he could not 'rule anything out like that,' allowing that in the early days after [9/11], White House lawyers worked on many things before regular assignments were sorted out. But, he said, his answer in 2006 was about [Stellarwind]."
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19. So Kavanaugh's 2006 testimony was accurate; he didn't see Stellarwind docs because he wasn't authorized to do so. When asked a broader question this week about whether he had discussed surveillance more generally, he said he "couldn't rule it out."
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20. Far from constituting "perjury," Judge Brett Kavanaugh's testimony about NSA warrantless wiretapping/surveillance, in both 2006 and 2018, was truthful, accurate, and complete.
#SCOTUS#KavanaughHearings#KavanaughConfirmationHearingsShow this thread
End of conversation
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