The Supreme Court nominee didn’t get any questions about this topic at his hearings, but he will now have to give some answers.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) wants to know if Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, has a gambling problem.
“Have you ever sought treatment for a gambling addiction?” Whitehouse asks pointedly as part of a series of questions submitted this week about Kavanaugh’s unexplained personal debts.
In 2016, Kavanaugh reported credit card and personal loan debts of between $60,000 and $200,000. The Trump White House said these debts were the result of Kavanaugh buying baseball tickets for friends who later paid him back, as well as some spending on home improvements. The 2016 debts did not appear on Kavanaugh’s 2017 disclosure form because they were either entirely paid off or fell below the reporting threshold. Kavanaugh also reported between $60,000 and $200,000 in debt in 2006.
The fact that Kavanaugh accrued such high debts through baseball tickets attracted notice, but surprisingly, not a single senator asked him about the issue during his televised judiciary committee hearings last week.
“Senators have limited time for questioning,” Rich Davidson, Whitehouse’s spokesman, said in an email. “Senator Whitehouse would have touched on many of these issues if he had additional time.”
