Kavanaugh says no one has too much power in US system. Critics see
Supreme Court bowing to Trump
[September 13, 2025]
By MARK SHERMAN
WACO, Texas (AP) — Justice Brett Kavanaugh says the genius of the
American system of government is that no one should have too much power,
even as he and other conservatives on the Supreme Court are facing
criticism for deferring repeatedly to President Donald Trump.
Invoking the list of grievances against King George III that the
nation’s founders included in the Declaration of Independence, Kavanaugh
said Thursday the framers of the Constitution were set on avoiding the
concentration of power.
“And the framers recognized in a way that I think is brilliant, that
preserving liberty requires separating the power. No one person or group
of people should have too much power in our system,” Kavanaugh said at
an event honoring his onetime boss, Kenneth Starr, a former federal
judge and solicitor general celebrated by conservatives who died in
2022.
Trump’s aggressive effort to remake the federal government did not come
up inside a gymnasium on the campus of McLennan Community College in
Waco.
Across the street from the event, though, several dozen protesters
offered a different view of Kavanaugh and Trump.
“Basically, the Supreme Court has handed the country to Trump,” said J.W.
LaStrape, the head of the Baylor University Democrats who was among the
protesters.
“BK- Trump Flunky,” one banner said. “Shame on You. No One is Above the
Law,” a placard read in a reference to the court’s 2024 decision, which
Kavanaugh joined, that helped Trump avoid prosecution for his efforts to
overturn his 2020 election loss.
The court’s liberal justices also have objected to the conservatives’
repeated votes in favor of Trump’s emergency appeals to the Supreme
Court, including the most decision this week to allow the resumption of
sweeping immigration operations in Southern California.
Kavanaugh’s appearance in Waco highlighted Kavanaugh’s long history with
Starr, most notably his stint as a prosecutor in Starr’s independent
counsel investigation of President Bill Clinton.
Starr became a household name in the late 1990s because of his
investigation of Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica
Lewinsky.
Kavanaugh pushed Starr to ask Clinton in graphic detail about phone sex
and specific sexual acts, according to a 1998 memo.
“The President has disgraced his office, the legal system and the
American people by having sex with a 22-year-old intern and turning her
life into a shambles – callous and disgusting behavior that has somehow
gotten lost in the shuffle,” Kavanaugh wrote.
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Justice Brett Kavanaugh holds his personal pocket constitution as he
speaks at The Ken Starr Lecture at McLennan Community College,
Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025, in Waco, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
Starr followed Kavanaugh’s advice and his report, filled with the
salacious details, was released in full by House Republicans, who
ultimately impeached Clinton for lying under oath. The Senate
acquitted him.
At a dinner honoring Starr a year later, Kavanaugh said Starr
deserved a seat on the Supreme Court, though he acknowledged it was
unlikely. Still, he called Starr a hero who did not let attacks
dissuade him from doing what he thought was right.
“Be sorry for his critics because they were the ones who sacrificed
law and principle for politics and expediency," Kavanaugh said. “Ken
Starr never did that.”
In 2018, Starr was among those who publicly defended Kavanaugh, then
a Supreme Court nominee, as he faced sexual misconduct allegations,
including from Christine Blasey Ford, who said he groped her at a
party when they were teenagers and tried to remove her clothes.
Kavanaugh forcefully denied the allegations in an emotional
statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, harking back to Starr's
investigation when he said “revenge on behalf of the Clintons” was
part of the motivation for what he termed a “calculated and
orchestrated political hit.”
Starr's widow, Alice, introduced the justice Thursday, saying she
was distraught when Kavanaugh's character was called into question.
“Not one bit of negative press was true,” she said, adding that she
was well familiar with such criticism from her husband's time as
independent counsel.
Ken Starr did varied work after the Whitewater investigation. He
represented Jeffrey Epstein when the financier was first accused of
having sex with underage girls. Epstein pleaded guilty to minor
charges and accepted a light sentence in Florida in 2008, in a deal
that avoided a more serious federal prosecution.
Starr served as dean of the Pepperdine University law school in the
Los Angeles area and then as president of Baylor University, also in
Waco. But he was forced out of the Baylor job in 2016 in the midst
of a sexual assault scandal involving players on the school's
football team. A school-commissioned report found that under Starr's
leadership, Baylor did little to respond to the allegations.
Then in 2020, Starr joined Trump's defense team that won Senate
acquittal of the president after his first impeachment.
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