Kavanaugh classmate rebukes nominee after initially backing him: His testimony was 'disheartening' — and disqualifying
One of Brett Kavanaugh's Yale Law School classmates has come forward to rebuke the Supreme Court nominee after initially backing him — and cited his Senate Judiciary Committee testimony as his reason.
"My first emotion was to feel sad that it was different than what I knew," Kavanaugh's former classmate Mark Osler told MSNBC's Ari Melber on Wednesday.
Osler and his fellow Kavanaugh classmate Michael J. Proctor sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week withdrawing their support for the candidate after signing onto a letter supporting him prior to the nominee's testimony.
"Before I signed the initial letter, I reached out to some of the people I knew who practiced in front of [the D.C. Circuit Court where the nominee presided]," the classmate said. "They reported he was fair, that he was thoughtful, that he hired good clerks — that's part of reason I signed the initial letter."
Kavanaugh's angry performance during his testimony, however, "cut against those recommendations."
"Under the current circumstances, we fear that partisanship has injected itself into Judge Kavanaugh’s candidacy,” Proctor and Osler wrote in their letter addressed to the presiding Democrat and Republican on the committee.“That, and the lack of judicial temperament displayed on September 27 hearing, cause us to withdraw our support."
Osler told Melber that of all his fellow Yale Law alumnae who've gone on to work in important jobs in the private and public sectors, he'd never seen any act that way in public — and especially not in a setting "where it's most important to model civility."
"It's disheartening," the nominee's classmate said.
Watch below, via MSNBC: