Trump lashed out at ‘totally disgraced’ Kavanaugh after Court refused to hear election fraud case

Former President Donald Trump was enraged after the Supreme Court declined to take up a case seeking to invalidate the 2020 election results of four states, and directed much of his ire at Justice Brett Kavanaugh, according to a new book on the president’s downfall.

In Michael Wolff’s Landslide, excerpts of which were published by The Daily Beast, Mr Trump excoriated his second of three successful confirmations to the bench, and appeared to question whether Mr Kavanaugh was truly a “great justice”.

“I’m very disappointed in Kavanaugh,” Mr Trump told Mr Wolff in an interview, according to the book. “He just hasn’t had the courage you need to be a great justice.”

Behind closed doors, Mr Trump was reportedly much more vicious in his denunciations of Mr Kavanaugh and his two other nominees, Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, over the court’s decision.

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Of Mr Kavanaugh, he reportedly added: “Where would he be without me? I saved his life. He wouldn’t even be in a law firm. Who would have had him? Nobody. Totally disgraced. Only I saved him.”

The Supreme Court dealt a major blow to Mr Trump’s months-long effort to reverse his 2020 defeat in December, when it declined to take up a case brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican and ally of the president, calling for the results in four states to be invalidated due to state lawmakers changing election rules in response to health concerns resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. All three justices named to the bench under Mr Trump’s presidency voted against hearing the case.

According to Mr Wolff, the former president also directed much of his fury at former Attorney General William Barr, whom the president perceived as disloyal following Mr Trump’s defeat. In particular, Mr Trump chafed at the refusal of US attorneys around the country to open investigations into supposed cases of election fraud, as well as Mr Barr’s own statement denying widespread voter fraud that could have affected the outcome.

“If I had won, Barr would have licked the floor if I asked him to. What a phony!” Mr Trump said, according to Mr Wolff.

While some of Mr Wolff’s reporting has been disputed in the past, the efforts of Mr Trump to overturn his election defeat and his subsequent outrage at allies who did not aid him is well known.

Mr Trump publicly torched his former attorney general in a statement in June, calling Mr Barr “a disappointment in every sense of the word” after Mr Barr referred to the former president’s allegations of voter fraud as “bull****” in an interview with ABC News’ Jon Karl.

In the same statement, he blistered Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell over the Kentucky lawmaker’s refusal to back him on the false allegations of fraud, calling the Senate GOP leader a “spineless RINO”, meaning “Republican-In-Name-Only”.

To date, no evidence has been presented to prove or even seriously allege that voter fraud or election fraud occurred on any level significant enough to affect the results in a single state during the 2020 election.