Mar 10, 2019

First look: Kavanaugh defenders team up on new book

Brett Kavanaugh

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Photo: Jabin Botsford - Pool/Getty Images

Brett Kavanaugh's defenders have a new project: a book to preempt several forthcoming books expected to describe allegations of sexual assault and their bearing on Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Details: Carrie Severino and Mollie Hemingway — of Judicial Crisis Network and The Federalist, respectively — tell us they will release a book this summer offering a sympathetic, insider account of Kavanaugh's confirmation.

  • The authors, both conservatives who supported Kavanaugh's confirmation, said they conducted over 150 hours of interviews with more than 60 key players.
  • Regnery Publishing, a conservative book publisher, has the project.
  • Hemingway and Severino told Axios' Alayna Treene that the book will describe conversations in the White House as they fought to get Kavanaugh on the bench; scenes from the Senate as Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, struggled to keep Republicans from voting against the judge; and Kavanaugh's personal approach to the tumultuous confirmation process.
  • They wouldn't say who they interviewed or whether Kavanaugh participated.

Hemingway and Severino told Axios they decided to write the book as a counter to books coming from the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus and New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly.

  • "Seeing how the media, including some of the authors of these books, treated the confirmation during the process itself, there’s not a lot of trust that they would treat this fairly," Hemingway said.

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