Despite outward appearances, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is not one of Washington, D.C.’s millionaire elites.
His financial disclosure depicts man of relatively modest means, unlike other justices who bankrolled millions in the private sector before landing on the high court.
But Kavanaugh, it appears, will get a shot in the arm: A GoFundMe account set up for the benefit of Kavanaugh and his family has exceeded $500,000.
Why the GoFundMe Account?
John Hawkins, a writer for PJ Media, opened the web-based fundraising campaign because of the vicious, leftist attack on the judge and his family.
“Like many decent people from both parties,” Hawkins wrote, “I have been disgusted by the unsubstantiated 36-year-old smears aimed at Brett Kavanaugh. We live in a country where innocent until proven guilty is supposed to mean something; yet Brett Kavanaugh’s reputation is being dragged through the mud while his family is facing non-stop death threats.”
The Kavanaughs, he wrote, can use the money any way they want. If they don’t take it, they can designate a charity. As well, Hawkins will pay for legal fees associated with transferring the money to Kavanaugh.
Hawkins hasn’t reached the judge to discuss giving him the money. Hawkins has raised his goal at least three times as the donations surged past each one.
As of now, the total is $513,642.
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Very likely, Kavanaugh won’t accept the money before his confirmation, and perhaps not even afterward, given the malicious headlines that doing so would generate. Inevitably, the leftist media would then target Kavanaugh with ludicrous claims that he is “turning a sex assault survivor’s story into cash.”
Anyway, Kavanaugh is by no means wealthy. As the Washington Post reported in July, “In 2016, Kavanaugh reported having between $60,000 and $200,000 in debt accrued over three credit cards and a loan. Each credit card held between $15,000 and $50,000 in debt, and a Thrift Savings Plan loan was between $15,000 and $50,000.”
Those debts, partly incurred by the purchase of season tickets for the Washington Nationals, were paid off.
Reported the Post:
For Kavanaugh, the differences between his finances and those of his would-be peers on the court are stark. He lists just two kinds of assets — unspecified accounts held with Bank of America, and his wife’s retirement fund from her job in Texas — totaling between $15,000 to $65,000.
His public filing does not include his home, which he purchased with his wife, Ashley, in 2006 for $1.2 million. Public real estate filings indicate that the couple has refinanced their mortgage twice, most recently in 2015. Their current mortgage is $865,000.
In other words, far from being a card-carrying member of the capital city’s moneyed upper stratum, Kavanaugh is an average upper-middle class man, despite going to a private Catholic high school and Yale University for college and law school.
If confirmed, MarketWatch observed, Kavanaugh will get a raise. His salary will go from $220,600 to $255,300, hardly an exorbitant salary in Washington, D.C., and its suburbs.
Ford’s GoFundMe
What his main accuser’s finances are we are not given to know. Psychology professors who step forward with hazy claims of attempted rape unsupported by memory or witnesses aren’t required to file financial disclosures.
But we do know that Christine Blasey Ford, whose claims were “refuted,” said the prosecutor who questioned her on Thursday, must do quite well.
That conclusion can be drawn from the prosecutor’s exposing Ford’s lie about her fear of flying.
Ford, who teaches at Palo Alto University, has claimed that the trauma of her encounter with Kavanaugh scarred her with severe claustrophobia. She just can’t stand being in closed-in spaces from which there is no escape, such as an airplane. This was one reason why, we were told, she couldn’t fly to Washington, D.C., to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
But somehow Ford did fly, and when she testified, she confessed an annnual flight to Washington, D.C., to visit family. And that wasn’t all. She leads a jet-setting lifestyle of “surf travel” to such remote, exotic destinations as Tahiti.
But that also revealed that Ford might be quite well-to-do and have more money than Kavanaugh. And if she wasn’t wealthy when she lodged the charge, she could be soon.
GoFundMe efforts on her behalf have netted nearly $750,000.
Photo: AP Images