The combative nominee was compelled to answer questions he clearly found embarrassing or offensive. What emerges is the image of a skilled lawyer who, when pressed on difficult subjects, sometimes crafted responses that were misleading, disputed or off point. At his first hearing, Judge Kavanaugh, a Yale Law School graduate, fielded questions on policy and political work in the bland, studiously noncontroversial tradition of nominees to the high court. But Thursday’s hearing sharpened the focus on a nominee in a way not seen since the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings of 1991. Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, reminded Judge Kavanaugh that juries were routinely instructed that they can “disbelieve a witness if they find them to be false in one thing.”“So the core of why we’re here today really is credibility,” he said.

Source: New York Times September 29, 2018 02:06 UTC