that's how i knew people were still marxists like obama. the first thing i wanted to do was scream it out and warn other people against falling into this trap and the people who don't do it the obamas the valerie jarrett's in a day arrived -- david axelrod's they all grew up that way may never detach themselves from it. [inaudible conversations] >> if this seems especially packed in here tonight there a couple of reasons for that. one obviously there's a lot of interest in this book but secondly we party started to set up for the holidays with traditional tables and we

weren't really going to have an in-store event this week but then we heard ruth's book was coming out so we decided we had to have it. [applause] so thank you very much for bearing with us. i am bradley graham the cone are of politics and prose along with my wife lissa muscatine. thank you so much for coming. we were very excited when we learned after last year's clematis hearings on the nomination of brett kavanaugh and the supreme court that ruth marcus was writing a book on the subject because we knew that if anyone could deliver an in-depth behind-the-scenes account of what happened and also put the whole drama into a grand and political context it would be roof. she hasn't disappointed. her new look "supreme ambition"

is fast-paced and makes for a really compelling read. in the acknowledge men's rev calls this a book she's been preparing to ride for her entire career and indeed she brought to it a wealth of knowledge and experience, educated in history at yale and harvard ruth went right into journalism after study and is spent at a 35 year career at the "washington post" closely observing how washington works in developing a wide network of sources. think nearly all of whom are here tonight. [laughter] as a reporter or editor ruth was involved in the coverage of key institutions such as the white house, congress, the justice department and the supreme court and in 2003 she joined the editorial board where she has risen to a position of deputy

editor. in 2006 she began writing a regular column and already next year was a finalist for a pulitzer prize in commentary. at that time the pulitzer judges cited quote her intelligence and commentary on a range of subjects using a voice that can be serious or playful and all that remains true to this day. as for the kavanaugh story many of us followed it on tv in the media very loosely but ruth and researching her book but conducted nearly 300 interviews and reveals much we didn't know about how brett kavanaugh's nomination came about and pushed through the senate. beyond details about about kavanaugh's ascension and ruth places it in the larger context of a calculated three decades long conservative effort with control over the high court.

that campaign is ruth describes ended up merging last year with kavanaugh's own secure spot on the court. it was a joining of two supreme ambitions and what turned into a very messy but flawed confirmation process is disturbing and lasting consequences for cat amount and our country. as with any good columnist ruth who has known kavanaugh for years offers own informed opinion in tells us very clearly in the final pages of her book what she thinks of the courts newest justice and his confirmation. her own judgment and very typical of ruth is very tough but also exceedingly fair. ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming ruth marcus. [applause] c oh god good i can see over this. i was a little worried.

hi everybody. thank you all so much for coming and thank you so much brad. half of what i wanted to say and one of the things that i wanted to say was the story of being able to be here tonight. the book was published today and every author's ambition is to be at politics and prose to talk about her book and as it happened i ran into brad and was at an event not that long ago, maybe six weeks ago when it was decided at the last minute by my publisher that we were going to speed up publication to today, december 3. an actual true story of what happened was i told list of the book is being published december 3 and less is said to brad, brad ruth's book is coming out december 3 and brad said oh while we don't do events in

december. licit turns to brad and said well now we do. [laughter] is that okay to tell? if you know was a no is it true story. and i'm so thrilled to be here and so thrilled to see my friends and family and colleagues and also unfamiliar faces whom i hope to have been readers and i hope will enjoy reading this book. i want to give a shout-out before i talk about my book to another author whose book is being published today, my friend tom rosenstiel. rosenstiel, are you here? okay hi. and if you are someone or know someone which you might if you are here tonight who is interested in how washington works, tom's books do precisely that which is to talk about d.c.

behind the scenes except he is a little more gunfire. i was thinking about saying a little more but we will think about that. tom's first novel shining city was about getting a supreme court nominee so i would say maybe the trump administration had brought on protagonist peter raine that they may have saved themselves some trouble but they didn't and vetting seems to be a particular non-strength of this administration so here i am. "supreme ambition" is my first book but as brad said in his introduction it's really the book i've been preparing to ride my whole life. the idea of writing it came to me very late in the confirmation process after that astonishing day that we all remember when blasey ford and brett kavanaugh testified about her allegations

and the fbi was doing i would say to quickly concluding its investigation and judge kavanaugh seemed to be hurdling and in fact was hurtling toward confirmation. i've been looking for the right book to ride for a few years now writing a book was on my bucket list and the kavanaugh confirmation exploded tonight tonight.two things. one was here's a great behind-the-scenes story for all the fantastic reporting that my colleagues have proposed around the cabin on nomination. it's a great worry about what's going on behind the scenes here and the second which i will talk about more is that this is a story that is bigger than brett kavanaugh. so story about the court and a three decade long conservative effort to find. lisa: control over the courts which is what was achieved with the kavanaugh confirmation. so i hope when you read the book

that you will decide that i've achieved both of those goals that i have taken you behind-the-scenes and that i have told the larger story. there are couple of behind-the-scenes moments in so many delicious ones. there is the moment and i'm not digging this one up, senator dianne feinstein, senator chuck grassley the ranking member and the chairman of the senate judiciary committee and their two top aides are gathered in a bathroom of the senate judiciary committee answering. senator feinstein and senator grassley asked the aide to go get the upgrades as she could tell them the first time about it before allegations. i have a picture in my iphone. i think i tweeted it the other day at the bathroom which looks like a faculty bathroom in a high school, maybe in a middle school and that is the place

where history was made. the moment when one of my favorite moments not very long after that when white house counsel don mcgahn is dealing with the aftermath of the christine blasey ford testimony net short time period between when she testified and the brett kavanaugh took the stand. everybody thinks at that point that brett kavanaugh's nomination is sunk to the president of the united states tried to call in mcgahn andy calls him and called cement don mcgahn as you can imagine is ignoring phonecalls from his lawsuit happens to be the most important person on the planet. finally don mcgahn's deputies reaches him and says the president is trying to get you. you need to talk to amend don mcgahn is not taking calls because he's convinced correctly or not that the president is

prepared to pull the nomination he does want to hear it so he tells andy donaldson i don't talk to quitters. i'm really looking forward to having president trump read that one when he reads the book which i think he did because he tweeted the other day that was not only badly written but he typed this twice badly received. [laughter] which rhymes with something. and donald trump wasn't the only president who was having a hard time getting his phonecalls through in the midst of the kavanaugh craziness. there's a magnificat scene the day after the hearing when senator jeff flake decides at the very last minute that he's going to want and need in order to secure his vote and fbi

investigation and it's like the scene in the marx brothers movie where everybody is crowded into the state room. every senator and every staffer associate with the judiciary committee is crowded into this anteroom and flake and senator coons from delaware has been trying to get them to agree to the fbi as dictation are huddled together in a phonebooth trying to reach the fbi director and somebody comes through with the phone saying president bush is trying to reach senator flake. president bush is trying to reach senator flake. brett kavanaugh was his biggest hurdle when he was trying to be chosen as a supreme court nominee buddy turned into the biggest advocate. senator flake said he was too

busy to talk to president bush but he didn't call him a quitter so that's a good thing. in that same scene we have senator ben says her sing into the anteroom angry at senator sheldon whitehouse, democrat from rhode island over some information at the thought senator whitehouse was peddling that he thought was at first to judge kavanaugh and he said where sheldon? i want to fight that guy. it's like a crowded marx brothers seen in a high school gymnasium. so we are here and i probably wouldn't have written this book had it not been for the uproar over the christine blasey ford nomination and except for those of you that are members of my immediate family or a book group that i've been part of for 30 years you wouldn't be here either if it wasn't for

christine blasey ford but i've want to talk about in many ways there's a lot of people like me in this room who have lived this along with me. the story of the kavanaugh confirmation is digger and in many ways more important than the showdown that transfixed us all in the fall of 2018. i wanted to tell the story about what happened behind the scenes but i did want to spend some time in the book talking about the larger history -- history and the broader implications of the kavanaugh battle. if you would indulge me and go to talk about a few chapters of my life that intersect with that history and give you a sense of what led up to the kavanaugh confirmation. the first is sent by the way they were something i wanted to point out because i have one huge reporting failure in this book that i need to confess to. like me brett kavanaugh was a

history major at yale college and every history major at yale college has to ride a senior thesis. i could not for the life of me figure out even though i spent a lot of time trying to report on it with a thesis was about so if you're looking for criticism of the book he spent all that time and couldn't figure when he wrote his senior thesis on but turning the time i was in law school progressives really ruled the legal academy and in fact they still do. the notion of interpreting the constitution according to the original intent of the framers was this wacky outlier idea. wasn't something that anyone took particularly seriously. it was sometime in my first or second year of law school that abandoned conservatives who were at this beleaguered minority on law school campuses got together at yale and they had a conference for something they

call the federalist society which was obviously going nowhere and was never going to grow to be influential and was just a way to make themselves feel good because they had such a crazy notion on how to interpret the constitution. it didn't quite turn out that way. the federalist society grew from this band of as i say wonky and beleaguered conservatives to become a kind of employment agency for conservative lawyers especially when republican presidents were in office and increasingly the vetting agency for getting these on the federal bench and it became helper for that helpful for one years later a gale law school student named brett kavanaugh and surely after he came to the post in 1987 was the first episode but it's still a very raw episode. i wrote about the excruciatingly

the first episode in the judicial nomination was ronald reagan's nomination of robert ward where right cat, now serves. one of the main arguments about the debate was whether or not he could could take an nominee's phraseology into account in deciding whether he or she and of or she end of course there was only when she on the court at the time should be confirmed but something that might sound quite it was viewed as a mark remarkable departure from the usual safe atmosphere the confirmation proceedings when an outside group called the peoples of the american way released an advertisement narrated by actor gregory peck that attacked work. of course today multi-million dollar advertising campaigns have become the norm in judicial confirmations. barr was defeated and this was

the third about him six republicans voted against confirming him two democrats voted in favor and that's a defection from the party that are all unimaginable today. and the bork defeat in many ways led us directly to judge kavanaugh. after judge bork was defeated and some people in this room remember the next nominee was judge ginsburg who was defeated for the poignant idea that it was improper to smoke marijuana with your students when you are teacher at harvard law school. this was huge news because we remember it and the number three choice was a man who was a judge on the federal appeals court in california named anthony kennedy for whom of course brett kavanaugh later clerked and whose retirement paved the way

for kavanaugh's nomination. had it not been judge bork's defeat and candidate selection and with the possible we wouldn't have kavanaugh today. the bork defeat was and never get moment for the conservative movement to this was their chance to secure a solid conservative on the court so was a much less conservative court and the core we have today in the court that justice kennedy left in 2018. conservatives vowed from that moment that was not going to happen again. the federalist society and its vice president began to assemble the architecture, financial architecture to make certain that wasn't going to happen and the gregory peck adds for people and the american way were overtaken at this humongous and instant advertising campaign.

fast-forward to the second precursor to the cat not hearings i live through. in fact full disclosure is how i met my husband. he was in a to a democratic senator on the judiciary committee and i was covering it for the "washington post" and no we didn't start dating until afterwards. but there was a lot of talk of sex in the interim. this was a different kind of confirmation battle, as i say not about ideology but about sex and the issue if there's anybody in the room who doesn't remember it or wasn't even born yet the issue was whether thomas when he was the head of the eeoc or earlier when he was in the visual and education department had made inappropriate sexual

comments to anita hill who was a lawyer on the staff that this was the episode that was different from an eerie precursor to the kavanaugh hearing. it was different from them because the judiciary committee was then entirely male and as much as these male senators said they understood sexual harassment was a rob lion they really didn't. they just didn't get it. they couldn't fathom how anita hill was alleging what anita hill was alleging and if it was true and how she could not come forward with her allegations and they couldn't imagine how she would travel with him to a different position when he went to the eeoc. it was different a number of ways and one was the nature of allegations and another is the volcanic anger that we saw from justice thomas and then almost identically except with the

element removed from justice kavanaugh. that leads us to the next chapter that rings as altogether which is impeachment. not the dash impeachment but the clinton went wanted that's how i met kavanaugh. he was a smart young lawyer working for ken starr. i was less young writer whose legal analyses of the star report ends up in the impeachment proceedings and the star moment was another one of those real turning point for brett kavanaugh. law school his friends had this understanding that he was a guy that was conservative and probably republican but he wasn't a standout conservative on the campus. in fact he was a first year law student that fall when the bork nomination was being debate -- debated and no one could remember him discussing a view on that. after all judge bork was a

professor at yale law school and so he was a good solid law student, not a law student that any of us thought was going to end up on the supreme court wednesday. then an amazing piece of luck came his way. been clerking that the republican pointed judge in delaware the third circuit and an opportunity arose that changed his life. there are some judges who are feeder judges who regularly send clerks to the supreme court. judge stapleton was not a feeder judge. in fact there was one clerk in one part only to clerked for judge stapleton and went on to the supreme court and that was judge cabinet. he went on to be a supreme court clerk and that was justice kavanaugh. brett kavanaugh lost out on the supreme court clerkship. he added interview with chief

justice rehnquist but he didn't get the job. it looked like he was going to go on to have a perfectly satisfying and very prestigious legal career. he was planning to work at williams and connolly a fine law firm here in town and then he got the call that changed his life. he got a call from a yale law school are faster who didn't remember that brett kavanaugh had been in the federalist society. he knew him very well from the basketball court. by the way sports thing i don't know if you guys in this room know what but sports is incredibly valuable to your career. i say guys because i'd grew up in the. title ix era so don't get mad at me. i'm sure it's valuable to women too. when justice kavanaugh was at yale college there were two questions on the application and

both were about basketball. did it work? i don't know. the judge calls brett kavanaugh and he says the judge on the 9th circuit in california has an opening in his chambers. i hear some noise they are because some of you may know of judge kozinski from his later notoriety as the judge who needed to resign or retire after allegations about his own misbehavior in sexual misconduct in terms of inappropriate comments and behavior toll at female clerks. judge kozinski had a sudden opening in his chamber but there is a guy named alex azar. this world is so small. alex azar is now the secretary of health and human services and has been angling for clerkship with judge kozinski almost since he got to law school.

mysteriously for reasons that are still cloaked in mystery he left the clerkship after six weeks. i created an opening that changed as i said fred kaplan of life. he was asked if he was interested in me said heck yeah. he headed out to california and that set him on a completely different trajectory. that subjected him first to work for then solicitor general "star" and worked at the solicitor general's office. open up the possibility and then the reality of the clerkship with justice kennedy because judge kozinski was in fact the person who helped to select a clerked for judge kennedy on the appeals court and he helps select judge kennedy's clerk, justice kennedy squared to that changed brett kavanaugh's life. he then based on that earlier

relationship with judge "star" and then solicitor general "star" went to work for "star" when you is investigating the contents impeachment. this was another turning point in brett kavanaugh's life and it was a huge surprise to some of his friends. they thought it was a partisan choice for him and they were even more surprised when they couldn't find the right page of their speech. they were even more surprised when he went to clerk where ricky really develop this animus toward the clintons that we then saw emerge in the hearings where he talked about the desire for revenge on behalf of the clintons. that was really amazing moment but it wasn't that amazing to some of the people who have heard brett kavanaugh talk about the clintons and how much he disliked and disrespected them

back during the "star" hearings. i am missing a great piece here. there was brett kavanaugh clerking for "star" and there was me working for the "washington post". in the course of researching this book and my researcher is here tonight i ran across an e-mail in the voluminous, there were thousands and thousands of pages from brett kavanaugh but one from his e-mail at the bush white house and one of them turned out to be an e-mail that mentioned me and it said something like this. it was march 52001 right after george w. bush takes office and it says i got a call from ruth

marcus at the "washington post" for they have been talking to her in it the reporter since i took this job but i did get to know her quite well during the starr investigation when i was assigned to prefer and she invited me to the white house correspondents' dinner. is it okay if we go. of course he says under no illusions about her motives here these buttering me up. but i think it would be good and let me know if we can go. i had almost no recollection of this moment and i was in fact not intending to butter up brett kavanaugh. i had the theory of the case that it was a really good idea if you were doing these things to invite people who would appreciate the invitation as opposed to people who wet rolled her eyes being required to go to get another white house correspondents' dinner. at present he got the okay

because he went. i have to say i never could have imagined from that moment that he would end up where he was today or that i would end up talking to you tonight about justice brett kavanaugh but here i am and i'm really looking forward to answering your questions about him or the book or almost anything else but the book would be good. [applause] come to the microphone if you would so people can hear your question. hi. thank you for coming. my question is there are a lot of allegations about the actual assaults or things like the devil's triangle that brett kavanaugh actually consciously

lied about in the testimony. do you believe if he did and if so why or why not? >> i do not believe that brett kavanaugh consciously lied in his testimony about whether he assaulted christine blasey ford or did any of the other sexual allegations that arose. i think there are arguments to be made about skirting around the truth regarding the meaning of the devil's triangle tour of all the other ridiculous. can you believe we are discussing people's high school yearbook pages and dissecting them? just to be absolutely clear i do believe that christine blasey ford was telling the truth. i don't believe she had any motive to not tell the truth. she had every motive not to come

forward. she was unable -- this was a woman who was unable to return to her house for three months. she didn't get back until christmas eve after all of this came forward. turn her life upside down. she had mentioned the allegations she had in the memory of brett kavanaugh to her husband and other friends well before he was on his way to the supreme court. and the notion that some republicans suggested that something terrible had happened to her was the story they said but that she was simply mistaken about who it was. that just makes zero sense to me but that's sad and perhaps i'm being naïve though i don't think i'm a particularly naïve person after all these years in washington but from everything i could tell from all the people i spoke with the new brett kavanaugh very well i do not

leave that he remembered this incident. my surmise, my assessment is that this was another drunken night for brett kavanaugh and that other, going to use the word boisterous but that doesn't downplay the significance of the harm that he did but he was he was messing around at misbehaving in a drunken way that night. he doesn't remember it because it wasn't a big deal to him and christine blasey ford remembers it very vividly so that's my long answer to your good question. >> it's become customary to thank servicemen and women for their service and they think since 2016 it should be customary to thank journalists

for their service. [applause] my question is this. it's only since 2016 that i've actually taken note of the tagline democracy dies in darkness. has it been there for a long time? >> first of all on the service thing thank you but it's one of those things that makes me in particular feel uncomfortable because i like to sit in my office or my kitchen counter and spout opinions and the worst i have to endure is nasty tweets from the president and that's just fine with me. there are journalists who are in harm's way. there are journalists who are scared when they go to trump rallies. but i think it's really remarkable that people for the first time in our career are

thanking us for what we are doing and i completely appreciate that because the president has taught us one thing, the importance of journalism. not necessarily be appearing in writing that i do. democracy dies in darkness is it just a sow's new to the post with the bezos acquisition of the post so that's the answer to that question. i thought it was cheesy. i shouldn't say this. i thought it was cheesy at the start but now i've really really like you can make gift my friends onesies for their grandchildren. >> how is it possible that buried in the middle of the front section was the story that president trump who is forcing the defense department to give a forwarded million-dollar

contract to somebody he admires. they had argued then reject did because the bid was inadequate. how does the post not put that on the front page? how is the post rearranging its coverage from important stories like that and the abhorrent of how people should feel about that and then they put on these happy public soft stories. >> i would note that story was in the newspaper and on the web site and i would if you don't mind rather answer questions about my own books and broader questions about the "washington post". >> okay but your columnist for years and i would think you would feel the same way.

>> it doesn't make any sense to me to engage in second-guessing about news decisions but thank you and thanks for reading. >> after the kavanaugh nomination to place a called senator harris is a sense of justice that might be a fruitful area of investigation to look at the relationship between kavanaugh and ken starr while starr was president there which ended i'm -- i'm happy. do you cover any of that stuff in your book? >> i don't. i actually don't see, that's not somebody came to my attention is not something that i looked into so maybe the paperback.

>> can you explain what happened with the fbi investigation? did senator coons get taken by senator flay? >> that is a great question. the fbi investigation was something that was not going to happen. the white house and the republicans senators, senator mcconnell and others, what they wanted to do was whatever it took to get just as kavanaugh and kavanaugh crossed the finish line. originally the plan and i ride about this in the book was not even to have a hearing at all. senator grassley and senator mcconnell had meetings with members of the judiciary committee and they said well it's just have private interviews with her. and lindsey graham said no, no that's not going to fly.

jeff flake said no, no that's not going to fly so we got the hearing. then famously senator flake was in the elevator and he told me it was the most sleepless flight -- sleepless night he expanded this senate and decided he was going to vote to confirm judge kavanaugh to the supreme court. senator coons had been importuning him to think more and to at least have an fbi investigation if the investigation could happen quickly enough and judge kavanaugh would be confirmed. famously despite his colleagues gathering around him trying to get him to change his mind and the former president george bush trying to reach him to vouch for judge cat one of senator flake demanded an fbi investigation he was backed up i senator

murkowski and senator collins. those votes were essential. i ride in the book behind the scenes judged kapono capano wanted an fbi investigation. was don mcgahn who said no, don't do that it's going to open it can of worms. we only need to worry about one thing, 50 votes, 50 votes, 50 votes because the president would break the type or when they decided to do the fbi investigation of question was what is the fbi investigation? there was a very easy answer that. was whatever senator flake senator murkowski and senator collins insisted on. they said for example the fbi ramirez a gale classmate of judge kavanaugh who caught him exposing himself to her when she was at yale but there was a very limited scope of that investigation.

it was very carefully controlled by don mcgahn in consultation with those key senators. to me the most upsetting and appalling dereliction of duty occurred when a man named max steyer who privately said he had seen judge kavanaugh exposed himself being propelled towards another woman in another incident that was very provocative of the incident that deborah ramirez are moored and by the way just to be very clear the woman he allegedly exposed himself to does not remember this incident, was quite inebriated at the time apparently. just to be clear she has told friends she doesn't remember the incident.

this witness a man named max steyer who is the head i run it we have a good government group here in town very well-known very good relations with key senators tried desperately to get the information to the fbi. he enlisted two former federal prosecutors with good relations with the fbi to get the fbi to take his information. then he tried to reach out to senator collins as she doesn't remember him reaching out to her direct we are indirectly. that didn't work. then he went in desperation by the way he and senator collins, he was no stranger to her. she has served on one of its advisory committees. he went to senator coons instead i have this information. i can't get the fbi to pay attention to. senator coons wrote a letter to the fbi are. this is a letter from a united

states senator but not just any united states senator. the letter from one of fbi director christopher wray's classmates at a later says please interview this one person. i importuning you. his name is max steyer. the letter is cc'ed to chuck grassley the chairman of the judiciary committee and dianne feinstein the ranking member. max steyer is not interviewed. then senator coons desperate to get attention to this starts to reach out to his colleagues. he calls and this is all in the course of days as the clock is ticking and the fbi is producing and delivering its report. he reaches out to senator flake and he says there is this guy you need to talk to and he says i'm dealing with death threats against my family but i can't deal with it. i can't talk to him. he tries to reach out and sends an e-mail to senator collins.

he doesn't hear back from her. why not? it turns out that senator collins e-mail has been widely disseminated in the middle of this whole mess so she changes her e-mail and senator coons, she sent a note to her colleagues. senator coons sends the e-mail to senator collins previous e-mail. it was not until i called senator collins office a year later that i found this e-mail from senator coons. senator collins in an interview with me made it exquisitely clear that by the time she heard about this so she would have gotten the e-mail that went astray it was too late in the game she thought and she wasn't going to change her vote and she said to me the victim doesn't remember it. how can we go forward on that case is? my answer would be there are lots of unfortunate fate tims of sexual misconduct and sexual assault who are too inebriated

to remember happened to them and what we need to do was to have an investigation that would get max steyer's testimony, talk to the woman herself and see what she did or didn't remember in at least figure out what happened so that we could get some clarity. it's clarity that might be useful for judge kavanaugh to avoid blood on his record, clarity that might be useful when the senate says no precisely to the nominee that i was voting on that i go on about this at some length because i think it's so important the fbi investigation was not a hunt for the truth produce a hunt for 50 votes and that's what they got. they got 51 in the end. >> like your husband many people here used to work in the senate. i thought senator feinstein made

a grave error and not raising the issue earlier with senator grassley notwithstanding the fact that it was a very partisan atmosphere. it's still that senate politics 101 and i'm wondering if you think it would have been a different if this had been raised in a more, an earlier time. >> at the time when the senate works? >> no, no earlier in the process. >> when you asks democrats about that and i've asked many democratic senators about that they just look at you because the senate is a different institution than the one you worked in and senator grassley today would tell you that they would have taken him sears and he is a commitment in the history of protecting whistleblowers so of course senator feinstein should have shared it with him. democrats believe if senator

feinstein had taken the information to senator grassley that would have gone immediately to the white house because they need to be involved in any fbi investigation and it would have been immediately disseminated. i think it's an important and reasonable question but i would say there's a middle ground for senator feinstein also because she got this information. it was very explosive. at that point christine blasey ford had been discussing this with a number for friends in palo alto. if there's one lesson we have learned from the clarence thomas anita hill episode gets that things come out, things leak so i think some people disagree with me. i think was almost inevitable but i think for certain certain information that was too

explosive for a single senator to make a decision on her own about whether to shared or not share it she was in and exquisitely difficult position because christine blasey ford did not want to come forward. the feinstein staff believed through the summer that she was eventually going to come forward but what i suggested in the book is where senator feinstein as difficult a situation she was in need of tragically wrong choice which is not sharing that decision that she made to keep the information to herself with her senate colleagues and with the leadership with the minority leader chuck schumer. that gave too much power and dangerous information for one senator to make that decision completely on her own.

>> congratulations on the book. had the fbi done a thorough job what would they have found? >> that's a great question. we don't know. i don't know. maybe they would have found that there was no corroboration for any of these stories. maybe they would have found if they had been able to follow, republicans here would say you are being naïve roof and you don't understand the way the fbi works. this is not a criminal investigation were the fbi is free to follow leads wherever they might take them and go down

every last rabbit hole. this is not a criminal investigation. this is a background investigation in this circumstance the fbi operates at the direction of its client which was the white house so i believe if the fbi director or standing here tonight he would say we did what we were told to do. i would say you have information that you knew might be relevant and you didn't pursue it that i can't say where an investigation by the fbi with the authority that has. people in background investigations aren't held to talk innocent investigations and they don't have subpoena power. nonetheless when the fbi agent knocks on your door you are a little more inclined to talk to the f. v. i other than the "washington post" reported. it could have been exculpatory for justice kavanaugh predicted and very dangerous for him but i

think it's very interesting. you know that look he had on his face when he is testifying when senator durbin and others could single why don't you want an fbi investigation? >> reality was he kept saying he wanted one but he couldn't go against don mcgahn because don mcgahn new he was keeping the support behind them to get into the court so i don't know. and things tend to leak in washington and since the kavanaugh hearing there hasn't been much leakage that reinforced with christine blasey ford said. since there hasn't been investigation either. i suppose -- spent most of my time figuring out who brett kavanaugh was and what to understand about his biography that could help us understand what kind of justice he was and how he was chosen and one of the

most interesting aspects about the whole selection process was anxiety that social conservatives have about judge kavanaugh and whether he would be conservative enough. and what happened behind the scenes as his confirmation preceded and the allegations came forward. i did try and others have tried to do more reporting but i would say an fbi badge might be a little bit more persuasive. next time. anybody else? hi owen. >> thank you very much for your book. in his introduction threat said it's a tough and fair -- of judge kavanaugh. see v thank you for asking that.

i had an opinion in the end on whether judge kavanaugh should have been confirmed but as i was writing the book i wanted to go back to my reporting roots in which i spent most of my crew at the "washington post" is a reporter and i really really believed as a reporter what you do is you provide people with enough facts to make decisions on their own. throughout the writing process i was having this kind of puzzle with my editor he kept saying people are going to want to know what this ruth marcus think? i kept saying can i just tell them what happened and i kid eyes rolling over the phone. i spent the month of august in wyoming with my family finishing the writing of the book and in one night we were out to dinner with our daughters and i said do

you guys think i should ride about what i think happened? they rolled their eyes visibly instead are you kidding? he as of course. like every good mother i listened to my daughters and thought of course that was totally reasonable. at the end of the book i have a chapter called will to live which i actually call final bots after an epilogue that basically says okay you guys have been stuck with this all along and here's what i actually think. what i actually think is very complicated. i was really surprised that rick kavanaugh was not on president trump's original list to be on the supreme court. i was really believed when he got on this list because i thought he was a standard run-of-the-mill republican nominee and elections have consequences. he's a true conservative but he wasn't as extreme a conservative

i thought that some of the other people who might have been nominated and who might well be nominated in the future. when he was selected i was in some ways relieved it wasn't somebody more extreme that president trump had selected. he selected the nominee who would have been the nominee of president jeb bush for president marco rubio. when the blasey ford allegations came up i thought this is really serious. i thought it needed a really serious investigation. ike included at the time separate from everything that i saw that her story was more credible than his denial. her story about what happened was the credible story and what i thought in a situation like that where the truth can't be absolutely none that both of the

ways we talked about this and we talked about it like it was a job interview, that was not fair to him because it was a public and excruciating interview ended also wasn't that he was entitled to the presumption of innocence. the resumption of innocence i don't find that particular the persuasive in the setting of a confirmation hearing. i thought that the benefit of the doubt in that situation should be given to the court were you didn't know if you were confirming somebody who had engaged in this behavior. and then for me the part that made it easiest was the testimony itself that his intemperate out verse which some people heard it but susan collins for example heard it and said will well anybody who is falsely accused would understandably lash out like that. i don't thing so.

that's not what judges do. senator flake had a very good line. he said we can't have that on the court. we can't have someone might bet on the court. i thought that just pushed me over the edge and made it much easier to conclude that the senate should not have voted to confirm him. that was the answer that i inflicted on my kids over dinner in wyoming. >> many times you've referenced the concern conservatives have over whether he'd be conservative enough. that got me thinking about to republican nominated justices who turned out to be disagreements disappointments to those who nominated him earl warren and david suter. based on what you found out about kavanaugh do you think there's any chance he would be less conservative than conservatives would like them to be? >> i think there's zero chance that he will be earl warren and zero chance that he will beat

david suter but i think that in the spectrum of conservatism it is entirely possible in a world where some conservatives think of chief justice roberts is some kind of terrible turncoat for having voted a few times to uphold things like the affordable care act and this is the evidence of brett kavanaugh's first term in the alignment from super ultra-conservative clarence thomas to just really seriously conservative to justice roberts. brett kavanaugh is apt to align himself closer to chief justice roberts and i was going to say more liberal but that's just not accurate. less conservative for example then justice bork so that's how i see it coming a pretty think

we have time for maybe one more really quick question that somebody has one. c this is following up on the last question but do you think that his experience in the hearing will affect him as a judge, as a supreme court justice and if so how? >> a fantastic ending question. we saw justice thomas was always going to be a conservative justice but i think the experience of that confirmation hearing for him really embittered him and really drove him very much into conservative corner. justice kavanaugh has told friends that without necessarily

mentioning that episode that he's very mindful of the desire to be the same kind of justice that he would have been had none of this happened and he is a different kind of person then justice thomas. he enjoyed teaching at harvard law school. he enjoyed going to yale law school and justice thomas never wanted to have anything to do with yale law school. keep putting 10 cents sticker famously on his yell law school diploma. i think judge kavanaugh would very much like some day go it's going to be difficult to be welcomed back into the establishment and to be if not admired at least more accepted than he is in some corners now. i think the likelihood is more

that this experience could lead him in some circumstances to find ways to ingratiate himself through some of his friends mitch and this to me. they may not be the most divisive cases but easy to make some amends with those who opposed him. so we will see. think this coming supreme court term is going to be one of the most interesting supreme court -- terms in history so stay tuned. thank you guys all so much. [applause] >> copies of words book are available for signing. please help the staff by folding up your chairs. thank you.

i started picking it up in my interviews even before i chose justice roberts as a subject that emerged in the research i was doing with justice sotomayor and the more approved the more i found allison -- elements frankly why he sets himself

above the others as you read in that letter and i didn't know how much to make of it so i mention it at little points in the book is that i end up saying is it doesn't really affect the law in the end. it i'd affect how they navigate changes in who picks up the phone to work on a compromise, who might feel like hacking off if the chief might not want it. in the end it's more human dynamic element than something that affects the law we all lived under.

generally speaking there is a terrible morning after effect following the great society binge. the economy began to flail as it never had before. we know that unemployment went towards 10% and we know that interest rates went past 15%. the high cost of labor under policies backed by the government did drive for american companies to leave town the grass that grew in pittsfield. >> to my mind a picture of what happens as this was actually. clear. i get the fact that other people

don't see that because there has been this deliberate effort to obscure that at the highest levels of our government but donald trump and william barr in and succeeded to some extent in confusing people about what the facts are. .. >> in fact i got a website hundred euro jobs are competent what are the entrepreneurs, and the website the interview, says entrepreneurs are different. we fail and we do, we get back on the horse. student watchful to be in this weekend and every weekend on