When Brett Kavanaugh goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he will do so as one of the most political Supreme Court nominees in modern history.

From his experience to the way he was chosen by President Donald Trump , Kavanaughs nomination is surrounded by partisan politics. And most troubling for some Democrats is whether partisan politics is also the reason why Trump picked Kavanaugh in the hopes that Kavanaughs belief in a strong executive would protect him from the investigations hes facing.

Judicial Payment For Political Services Rendered

Kavanaugh cut his teeth in Washington working for what Democrats consider to be the most brazen and partisan crusade in modern politics: Ken Starrs investigations into President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

Kavanaugh spent more than three years working for the independent counsel who was looking into various scandals surrounding the then president. He was a proponent of aggressively going after Clinton, urging prosecutors to question him in graphic detail about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. The New York Times described a 1998 memo Kavanaugh wrote as shot through with disgust for Mr. Clintons behavior and deep hostility.

Kavanaughs 10 suggested questions included ones about oral sex, masturbation and phone sex. He reportedly regretted the tone of the memo after writing it.

But even before the Lewinsky affair, Kavanaugh was urging Starr to go hard after Clinton. He personally pushed for expanding the Whitewater investigation to include looking at the death of White House staffer Vince Foster.

Foster committed suicide in 1993, a conclusion reached by U.S. Park Police (since Foster died in a park)and the FBI . In fact, multiple investigations concurred that it was a suicide.

Yet in March 1995, after those reviews, Kavanaugh called for a full-fledged investigation into Fosters death. That inquiry helped validate right-wing conspiracy theorists who believed that the Clintons killed Foster, and the matter outraged Fosters family.

After his work with Starr, Kavanaugh went on to earn top jobs in Republican circles. He was part of George W. Bushs legal team in the 2000 recount. In the White House, he served as staff secretary and as associate counsel, overseeing judicial nomination fights .

Remaking the courts to push a conservative agenda was on Kavanaughs radar and discussed in the Bush White House. On June 7, 2003, he emailed a fellow White House staffer, Joel Kaplan, with the subject line: Post story see last paragraph per our discussion. The email consisted of an op-ed with a final section that read:

The odds are that the Senate will soon have a chance to determine whether the Supreme Court will continue in the mold of the Rehnquist Court usually to the right of center but cautious, sometimes messy, and in major cases, often unpredictable or whether the next chief justice will have the inclination and the votes to take the court, and the country, in a very different direction.

Its not clear whether Kavanaugh agreed with that assessment, and Kaplan didnt reply to a request for comment on their discussion.

Republican supporters say that Kavanaugh is a brilliant legal mind (in 2003, GOP strategist Karl Rove reportedly called him one of the smartest people he knew , according to a colleague in an email) who has received the American Bar Associations highest rating . They say his pick shouldnt have been a surprise; Trump is, after all, a Republican, and he would therefore pick someone who shared his worldview.

But Democrats have long been uneasy with Kavanaugh, and Trump no doubt knew that by picking him, hed encounter objections.

Bush nominated Kavanaugh for a seat on the prestigious D.C. Circuit in 2003, but he wasnt confirmed until 2006 because of opposition from Democrats. Then, as now, Democratic senators were uneasy with his previous jobs in Republican politics.

In 2004, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is now the minority leader, said Kavanaughs nomination was among the most political in history and appeared to be judicial payment for political services rendered.

As I look through all of the different issues that you have been involved in as an attorney in public service and the private sector, it seems that you are the Zelig or Forrest Gump of Republican politics , said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) in a 2004 Judiciary Committee hearing. You show up at every scene of the crime. You are somehow or another deeply involved, whether it is Elian Gonzalez or the Starr Report, you are there.

An Incomplete Picture Of Bush White House Work