If I Were Questioning Brett Kavanaugh

Posted: September 6th, 2018

By Walter Pincus

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010. He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.

OPINION — Brett M. Kavanaugh ought to be questioned on how a President, alleged to have violated a federal criminal law – say conspiring to violate the Federal Election Laws – could be investigated based on the views he promoted in his 2009 article, “Separation of Powers During the Forty-Fourth Presidency and Beyond,” published in the Minnesota Law Review.

In that article, Kavanaugh said, “Congress might consider a law exempting a President—while in office—from criminal prosecution and investigation, including from questioning by criminal prosecutors or defense counsel.”

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