Former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday that he believes Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is “unfit” to serve on the highest court in the land.
Speaking to a class at Emory University in Atlanta, Carter called Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court a “very serious mistake.”
“I thought, whether or not he attempted to rape [Christine Blasey Ford], whether or not, I thought he was temperamentally unfit to serve on the Supreme Court because of his outburst during the hearing,” Carter said, according to a video posted by a student who was in attendance.
Kavanaugh’s confirmation process became entangled in controversy after Christine Blasey Ford, a California professor, accused him of sexually assaulting her while they were both teenagers at a party in the Washington, DC, suburbs. An FBI investigation ensued, and Kavanaugh ended up being confirmed to the court by a narrow 50-48 vote along mostly party lines.
“I think most of the American people were not in favor of him being on the Supreme Court, but he’s there now,” Carter continued. “Because the Senate is quite subservient to Donald Trump, they’re afraid of his displeasure.”
“I saw him lose his cool,” Carter said about Kavanaugh’s performance during testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee last month
Carter isn’t the only politician who has publicly come out against Kavanaugh being on the court. Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton also recently criticized Kavanaugh’s temperament.
“There is such a thing that you seek in judges of a judicious temperament … people who are able to discipline themselves, to be open to the evidence wherever it might lead. … This was quite unusual, what we saw the other day,” Clinton told The Atlantic earlier this month.
